


to find you again

by nightswatch



Series: Aces Rookies in Love [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Coming Out, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Hockey Trades, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-09 09:10:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 44,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10408788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightswatch/pseuds/nightswatch
Summary: Julian Keller quickly finds a best friend in Ezra Stevens when he's drafted by the Las Vegas Aces. Except he soon realizes that he actually wants to be a more than just Stevens' friend. Not that that's ever going to happen, because sometimes the universe hates Julian Keller a little bit.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My Aces rookies fic that ended up being weirdly popular even though it's just my OCs. Thanks to everyone who sent me comments and told me that they wanted to know more about my rookie sons.

“I’m going to die,” Kelly whispers. “I am. Going to. Die.”

A hand settles on his back. Kelly can barely feel it through his pads. “You won’t,” Stevens says. _You won’t_. How the hell can he be so sure about that?

“I am. I’m going to go out there and I’m going to drop dead. Right there on the ice. And people will say, _Oh, there goes Julian Keller, he had potential, but he just had to go and kick the bucket during warm-ups because he couldn’t handle it. Too bad_.”

Stevens only huffs.

“Aren’t you nervous?” Kelly asks.

“‘Course I am.”

But he doesn’t sound nervous. He doesn’t look nervous. Stevens played college hockey before he signed with the Aces, but technically they’re in the same boat. It’s Stevens’ first game, too. They’re about to play their first NHL game and Stevens is as calm as still water and Kelly is two seconds away from a heart attack and there’s something really not right about that.

“I’m going to die,” Kelly says again.

Stevens’ hand is still on his back and Kelly is pathetically glad that he’s not alone.

Kent comes over to them before they head out of the locker room. He grins at them. “Don’t forget to enjoy it, all right? You good?”

Kelly doesn’t manage much more than a nod. This isn’t his first hockey game. Maybe there’s more people watching, maybe it’s a different team, but the game is still the same. Kelly knows how to play hockey. He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t. Still. That doesn’t mean that he can’t also be eighteen and scared shitless.

Once Kent is out of earshot, Kelly says, “Do you think they’ll send me back to Canada if I throw up on the ice?”

“Breathe,” Stevens only says.

Kelly desperately tries to remember how. He’s busy with that until it’s time to go.

Stevens tugs at Kelly’s jersey. It’s more reassuring than anything else in the world.

*

“This cucumber looks really weird.”

“Huh?” Stevens only says. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, playing Candy Crush on his iPad.

Kelly likes living with Stevens, because Stevens knows some things about the Adult Business. Like, he’s done laundry before. He knows how to cook pasta. He understands the intricacies of grocery shopping. Stevens doesn’t talk much, but Kelly can live with that. “You talk enough for both of us,” Stevens always says. The best thing is that he doesn’t mind all of Kelly’s talking.

Because Kelly knows that he can get annoying. He talks when he’s nervous and he talks when he’s happy and he talks when he’s sad. He talks and Stevens listens and says, “That’s nice,” and, “That’s rough,” and, “Just go the fuck to sleep, Kelly.”

Stevens is the best roommate Kelly could have wished for. Parse even helped them find a condo, showed them around, made sure they had everything they needed and threatened that he’d drop by randomly to make sure they had more than ketchup and really old takeout in their fridge.

(They do have more than ketchup and really old takeout in their fridge.)

“Stevie,” Kelly says. “Candy Crush hasn’t been cool in, like, ten years.” He holds up the cucumber. “Can you avert your grown-up eyes from your new toy for five seconds and tell me if I can still eat this or if I’ll die of weird cucumber poisoning?”

Stevens looks up and frowns. “Kelly, that’s a zucchini.”

“Oh,” Kelly says. “Can we order pizza?”

“No mushrooms for me,” Stevens only says.

*

“This is the best day of my life,” Kelly says for the tenth time since they left the arena.

Stevens laughs. “I bet.” He hangs up his coat and takes Kelly’s too, puts his shoes in the closet and his key in the bowl by the door. Stevens has his life under control, no doubt about it. Kelly’s already lost his keys twice this month, once in his room, once in his equipment bag.

“I can’t believe you did that.”

“Well, I did.”

“You’re, like, my best friend. Seriously, Stevie, you gave me a hatty.”

“I did not.”

“No, but you could have scored that empty netter,” Kelly says and follows Stevens down the hallway. “But you didn’t. You thought, hey, I’m the greatest dude on the planet and I’m gonna pass Kelly that puck so he can get a hatty. That’s what you did.”

“Kelly, this isn’t your room,” Stevens says.

“I know.” Kelly just wasn’t done talking yet. He still isn’t done talking. Because this is the best day of his life and he won’t be done talking for another two hours, probably. Kelly flops down on Stevens’ bed with a sigh. Honestly, who makes their bed every day? Whatever. Kelly grins. “I did that.”

“You did.”

“And you helped.”

“I guess I did,” Stevens says and wanders out the door, a small smile on his face.

Kelly calls his mom while he waits for Stevens to get back. Then he calls his sister. Then he replies to messages. Then he bounces up and down on Stevens’ bed for a bit because he got a hatty and he’s pretty sure that he’ll never be this happy again.

Stevens shuffles back into his room, now wearing one of those faded shirts from his college that he always sleeps in. “You gonna sleep here?” he asks and faceplants right into bed.

“I mean, probably,” Kelly says, although he’s too excited to even think about sleeping right now.

“Okay,” Stevens mumbles.

He just doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that Kelly falls asleep with his head on his shoulder all the time, he doesn’t mind that Kelly is the biggest hugger on the planet, and he just goes with it when Kelly falls asleep in his bed.

Stevens also knows that Kelly’s gay. And it just… wasn’t a big deal. There was no flinching, no eyebrow-raising, no prolonged silences. He just said, “Thanks for telling me.” And maybe telling Stevens was easy because their captain is gay and he’s out and Kelly’s been looking up to him for years and if Kent Parson can do this, then so can Kelly, right? Or maybe it was easy because Kelly has never felt more comfortable around any other person in his entire life.

Stevens is his guy. He’s the best friend Kelly’s ever had and he’s so, so happy that, through some stroke of luck, they both ended up in Vegas at the same time.

*

“You’re weirdly quiet,” Stevens says.

Kelly shrugs. He has nothing at all to say. In fact, he wants to lie down and never speak to anyone ever again. Yeah. That happens sometimes. Like, once a year maybe.

Practice was horrible.

Kelly kinda just wants to hide. It’s what Stevens does when he’s not feeling that great. He hides in his room and works his way through a pile of books and when he comes back out again, everything’s fine. Only Kelly actually wants to crawl into a hole and stay there for the rest of his life. No more hockey. No more people. He’d miss both about ten minutes later, but still. Kelly sighs and sullenly shovels the rest of his cereal into his mouth.

“Kells,” Stevens says. “Is that your dinner?”

Kelly shrugs again. He puts his empty bowl into the sink, ignoring that Stevens is giving him the _you could have just put that into the dishwasher_ look.

Stevens huffs and looks at Kelly with that super serious expression he always puts on when he’s worried about someone (Kelly) and that someone (Kelly) isn’t cooperating. It’s unnerving how well Kelly knows that look.

“It’s because of practice, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Kelly says. He tries not to look at Stevens. He doesn’t want to be the kid that Stevens is worried about anymore. They’re both rookies. And, sure, Stevens is older than him and he knows how to cook dinner without setting off the fire alarm, but still, Kelly isn’t an actual child. He’ll be fine. He’ll deal with it.

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“It was,” Kelly says to the tiled floor. “I just wasn’t focused.” There are little red stains on the tiles where Kelly spilled some tomato sauce the other day. And it’s his turn to clean the kitchen.

For some reason, Kelly feels like crying.

“Hey,” Stevens says. “It’s okay.”

And that’s pretty much all it takes to make Kelly cry for real. He hears Stevens shuffle over to him, and then there’s a hand on his back and all Kelly has to do is lean closer. Stevens doesn’t chirp him. He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t say anything, he just wraps his arms around Kelly and lets him sniffle into his shirt.

*

“Aww, look at Stevie.”

“Sleeping beauty.”

“So cute.”

“Leave him alone,” Kelly grumbles. The other guys stop cooing, but they don’t stop taking pictures. Kelly glares daggers at them.

They’re stuck in Montreal for at least another hour because of the snow and Stevens hasn’t been feeling that great all day, so now he’s taking a nap, hood pulled over his eyes, head pillowed on Kelly’s thigh.

Kelly finds a picture of them on Sunny’s Twitter about half a minute later. He flips Sunny off, but he likes the post.

The guys leave them alone eventually. Sunny falls asleep about ten minutes later. Jeff draws a sun on his face and a picture of that ends up on Twitter as well. Kelly retweets that one. Jeff, sharpie still in hand, glances at Stevens too, but Kelly glares as hard as he can and Jeff grins, holds up his hands in surrender, and retreats to sit with Kent.

It takes another two hours for them to get on the plane. Stevens wakes up long enough to move his ass into the plane and doesn’t protest when Kelly carries his bag. It’s heavy as shit because Stevens has about four or five books in there – it was a long roadie – and normally Stevens wouldn’t let anyone touch his books, so he must be feeling like he has one foot in the grave right now.

“Thanks Kells,” Stevens mumbles once they’ve sat down in their usual seats, then he closes his eyes and goes right back to sleep.

Kelly grabs his blanket and is fast asleep a moment later, head on Stevens’ shoulder.

From then on, Sunny keeps calling them the team’s resident cuddlers and it sort of catches on. Kelly makes a point in hugging everyone who points it out extra hard.

*

They don’t make it any further than the first round of playoffs that year. Kent throws them a huge party, Kelly drinks too much beer and falls asleep on the couch with Stevens and Kelly somehow ends up with Stevens’ arm around his waist.

The chirps are endless. Everyone has pictures. (Everyone has pictures of Sunny snuggling with Kit, too. And everyone has pictures of Bennie sleeping in the kitchen with his head on a pizza carton. But apparently none of those are half as funny as those of Kelly and Stevens.)

Stevens laughs at him the next morning, eyes crinkling, and he ruffles Kelly’s hair and Kelly, still bleary-eyed, his head already pounding, feels like life just pulled the rug out from under him.

Because Stevens kinda looks really good when it’s mid-morning and he’s lying in a patch of sunlight on Kent Parson’s couch and he’s all rumpled and his hair is sticking up oddly. And. Maybe Kelly stares a little.

“You look like shit,” Stevens says.

Kelly hides his face in a pillow that’s covered in cat hair and wishes for a quick and painless death.

*

“Hi, I’m Elena Rodriguez and I’m here today with Julian Keller and Ezra Stevens of the Las Vegas Aces. Thanks for joining me, guys!”

“Thanks for having us,” Kelly says.

Stevens only smiles and nods.

Kelly has a sneaking suspicion that PR always pairs him with Stevens for interviews because he’s gotten pretty good at filling Stevens’ silences.

“The both of you are two weeks into your second season with the Aces. How would you say it’s going so far?”

“Pretty good.”

“Yeah, we’ve been doing pretty well so far. The last three games were great, obviously, and we’re hoping that we can continue that streak we’re on right now.”

Elena asks them about their upcoming roadie, about the new guys on the team, and then, inevitably she says, “Now, the two of you have quickly turned into fan favorites. Everyone’s talking about your epic bromance.”

Kelly smiles through it. Stevens only laughs when Elena brings up the pictures they put on Instagram during the summer when Stevens came to visit Kelly at his parents’ house in Ontario. Kelly learned several things last summer: Kids love Stevens. Kelly’s two nieces were all over him, because Stevens let them braid his hair – there are pictures of Stevens with wonky pigtails that didn’t end up on Instagram. And Stevens can draw. Stevens can juggle. Stevens wasn’t more talkative in the summer, but sometimes Kelly thought that Stevens laughed more.

He laughed when Kelly spilled his cereal all over the kitchen counter, and he laughed when Kelly took the wrong turn when they drove to the lake Kelly spent most of his childhood summers at, and he laughed when they were lying in the middle of the Keller’s backyard, talking about everything but hockey, the sun setting, turning the world golden. When Kelly thinks about last summer, he thinks about Stevens sitting in the sun, laughing his ass off about something.

It didn’t really help with that extremely unfortunate… _thing_.

Look. This isn’t the first time Kelly has a crush on a teammate. It happened before, years ago, and he knows that it’ll go away. But he lives with Stevens and they’re constantly around each other, so it might take a while.

But it’s fine. Really. Kelly totally has this under control. He tries not to fall asleep in Stevens’ bed anymore.

(He still does.)

And maybe Kelly feels a little guilty about it, but not guilty enough to stop hanging out in Stevens’ room. Nothing really changes. Except sometimes Kelly catches himself looking at Stevens for a few seconds too long, but Stevens doesn’t seem to notice, so Kelly ignores it just like he ignores so many other things.

*

Stevens meets Haley at his favorite bookstore. He comes home with half a dozen books and her phone number.

And Kelly knew that him and Stevens… Well, that was never gonna happen, right? So he’s not sure why he’s so disappointed when Stevens ends up going out with Haley. Or why Kelly feels like someone punched him in the gut when he runs into Haley in the kitchen one morning a week later.

Haley is one of the nicest people Kelly has ever met. She’s a kindergarten teacher. She’s smart. Funny. Kelly could talk to her for hours. She introduces Stevens and Kelly to her friends and one of them is clearly interested in Kelly and they talk and he can definitely see himself being friends with her, but that’s all they’ll ever be.

It’s not really surprising that Haley sticks around for a while. She comes to their games, she hangs out at their apartment, she comes around on Christmas.

She bakes Kelly a birthday cake in January.

They get along. They get along, but Kelly doesn’t get to fall asleep in Stevens’ bed anymore, and he doesn’t lean against Stevens when they’re watching movies anymore and Kelly starts to feel weirdly lonely.

He does get along with the other guys on the team, but Stevens was _his guy_. He still is his guy. But it’s not the same.

On Valentine’s Day, they’re in Houston. Stevens calls Haley in the afternoon before the game – they lose – and Kelly tries not to hate everyone around him. PR asks them questions about their first dates ever and about what they’d get their teammates for Valentine’s Day and it’s all in good fun, but it’s exhausting.  

After the game, Kelly crawls into bed and tries to ignore that Stevens’ phone keeps lighting up. For the first time, Kelly hates rooming with Stevens a little bit. Kelly wouldn’t want his own room, it’d get boring with no one to talk to, but today he has absolutely nothing to say.

Eventually, Stevens’ phone goes dark and he sighs. “Kells.”

Kelly almost wants to pretend that he’s asleep. Stevens would know that he’s just pretending, but he’d leave him alone. Kelly blinks at the ceiling. “What?”

“Talk to me. It freaks me out when you don’t.”

“What do you want me to say?” It comes out sullen, like he’s pouting. Kelly isn’t a big fan of himself today.

Stevens’ sheets rustle. “You’re sad.”

Yeah, that’s Stevens for you. He doesn’t say much, but what he does say is right on target. Kelly doesn’t reply. He’s feeling a lot of things right now, and maybe he is sad, but mostly he’s angry at himself because he’s so fucking transparent.

Stevens doesn’t pry, but he doesn’t say good night just yet either.

“I just don’t like Valentine’s Day,” Kelly mutters.

He can hear Stevens let out a soft breath. “Don’t you ever want to… go out with someone?”

“What? Date a guy? Bring him to team events? Put a huge fucking target on my back?”

“Kent’s out.”

Kelly fights the impulse to say something like, _What the hell do you know?_ It’s not that easy. “He’s Kent Parson. That’s not the same thing. He was already a legend before he came out and you know what people said about him when he did, right? What they’re still saying? And Kent’s…” Kent’s not alone. He has Jeff. And Kelly isn’t ready for everyone to know. He’s not even ready for anyone else on the team to know. “He’s _Kent_.” Kelly just isn’t on that level yet.

Anyway. All of that is beside the point.

The point is that Kelly is jealous. He’s jealous and lonely and sad. And Kelly isn’t used to feeling any of those things. He doesn’t _want_ to feel any of those things.

“Kells…” Stevens says.

“Can we just sleep and forget that I was a grumpy asshole all day?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

“Night, Kelly.”

“Night, Stevie.”

Kelly sits next to Stevens on the plane the next day and maybe Kelly doesn’t talk as much as he usually does, but he’s pretty sure that they’re okay. Haley comes over once they’re back home and Kelly sticks around long enough to exchange _how are you_ s before he sneaks away to take the longest nap of all time.

*

They’re nearing the end of the regular season and it’s not looking good for them. Kelly was out injured for six games in December and he feels like he hasn’t been doing enough all season long, but maybe that’s just his ever-present fear of not being good enough for anyone or anything.

When the Aces don’t make it to the playoffs this year, the summer stretches out in front of Kelly like an endless gaping hole.

*

“Julian, your phone…”

“Just a second, I’ll get it,” Kelly says and carefully makes his way through the minefield of legos that his nieces have left behind on the living room floor.

He’s home in Ontario, it’s the end of June, it’s been raining all day, and Kelly doesn’t really know what to do with himself. He didn’t know what to do with himself yesterday. Or the day before yesterday. He spent some time with Stevens a couple of weeks ago in his home town in Massachusetts and Stevens’ dad taught Kelly how to make Stevens’ favorite chocolate cake and his mom tried to teach him how to play chess. The chess thing didn’t work out, but Kelly’s pretty sure that he’ll still be able to make that cake for Stevens when they’re both back in Vegas.

Kelly is _so_ ready to go back to Vegas. He stepped on a lego twice yesterday.

He only barely manages to get to his phone before it stops ringing. It’s Stevens.

“Dude, what’s up?” Kelly says and quickly slips out of the living room. His mom’s watching her favorite telenovela and Kelly knows that she’ll get out the extra evil look if she misses anything important because he’s talking to someone on the phone.

Stevens takes a deep breath on the other end of the line.

“Stevie?” Kelly says. He sits down in the kitchen and steals a cookie off the baking tray that his mom put down on the counter to let it cool earlier. “Everything okay?”

“They traded me to Seattle.”

“What?”

“To the Schooners, Kells.”

“You’re…” Kelly drops his cookie on the table. “You’re leaving?”

“It’s not like I have much of a choice.”

“But–” Kelly knows that this is just the way it is. It’s a business. In his two years in the league, Kelly has already seen a whole bunch of people come and go and he knew that he could have been one of them, that Stevens could have been one of them, but for some reason he wasn’t expecting this. Not today. “You can’t just leave.”

It’s not gonna be the same without Stevens. Kelly’s gonna have to find a new roommate. Someone who remembers to buy milk. Kelly bites down on his bottom lip. He’s not gonna cry about this. It’s just… you don’t find a friend like that twice in your life, do you?

“Sucks,” Stevens says. There’s something in his voice that tells Kelly that he isn’t the only one who’s trying really hard not to cry.

“Yeah,” Kelly says quietly. He’s not sure if Stevens can even hear him.

“I…” Stevens doesn’t say anything for a moment and Kelly for once doesn’t know how to fill that silence. “I should call Haley,” Stevens says eventually.

“Right.” He hasn’t told Haley yet? “I’ll talk to you soon, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Stevens says. “Bye, Kells.”

“Bye,” Kelly mumbles. He hangs up. Puts down his phone. And then he doesn’t really try not to cry anymore.


	2. Chapter 2

Kelly has already curled up in bed when Stevens calls. He’s been going through his Instagram feed and he just liked a picture of Stevens and a bunch of kids at the Schooners’ practice rink, so Stevens probably knows that he’s still up.

“Hey, Stevie,” Kelly says when he answers the call, “how’s it going?”

He goes for casual, because his other option would be whatever emotion he’s feeling when he thinks about the fact that they haven’t talked in a week and that he really misses Stevens, and Kelly knows that it’s fucking pathetic, but that’s just the way it is.

Kelly has a new roommate now. It’s Antonio Flores, the Aces’ first round pick. He’s a shy kid, but he smiles a lot, he’s curious as shit, and they get along just fine. But he isn’t Ezra Stevens. Kelly is the guy with experience now and Flo, as Jeff likes to call him, is the new kid. Kelly’s trying to take him under his wing like the other guys did for him and Stevens when they were new in Vegas, but he’s not sure if he’s doing that great of a job.

“Hey, Kells,” Stevens says. “I was gonna call yesterday, but…” He trails off into a quiet sigh. “Good game today.”

“You watched?”

“Yeah. Didn’t have anything better to do.”

Kelly laughs. They’ve been watching each other’s games ever since the season started. Well. Whenever they didn’t end up playing on the same day. The Aces are playing in Seattle three weeks from now and Kelly is dying to see Stevens again. They text pretty much every day, but it’s not the same as having Stevens in the room right across the hall.

“Did you see when Mashkov came at me in the second? I thought he was gonna kill me, seriously, he’s such a huge dude? Like, when you see him in interviews he’s so nice and funny and when he’s on the ice he turns into some kind of murder machine.”

“I saw. Glad he didn’t get you.”

“Yeah…” Kelly pulls his sheets up to his chin. “How’s your face, by the way?”

“Still handsome.”

Kelly snorts and silently agrees. A couple of days ago, Stevens had a bit of a disagreement with one of the Aeros’ D-men – actually a bunch of Schooners ended up having a bit of a disagreement with a bunch of Aeros and both teams’ penalty boxes got a little crowded for a while there – and Stevens ended up with a black eye. “You’re a goon, Stevie, it’s official now. Do I have to be scared? Are you gonna fight me when I’m in Seattle? And in the interviews I’ll say, ‘Yeah, he was my best friend once, but he’s a goon now, there’s no going back from that. Things will never be the same.’ It’s gonna be the end of our epic bromance, Stevie.”

Stevens is wheezing with laughter and Kelly wishes he could see his face right now. He’s pretty sure that Stevens’ cheeks have gone all red and he’s probably lying on his back, trying to catch his breath.

Kelly almost says, _I wish you weren’t so far away_. He wants to lie in Stevens’ bed and laugh with him and be ridiculously in love with him. Well, he’s ridiculously in love with him either way. Kelly squeezes his eyes shut. He hates this. He hates himself. He hates that he can’t get over this stupid crush.

“I’m not gonna fight you, Kelly,” Stevens grits out eventually. “You wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“Since when are you so rude? Fucking fight me, Stevie, I dare you.”

Stevens starts laughing again. He hiccoughs and takes a deep breath and then they’re both quiet for a moment. Kelly is used to Stevens being quiet, but Kelly has a lot of things to say, except he can’t say any of those things, because what is saying _I miss you_ gonna do, exactly? It won’t help. If anything, it’s gonna make him feel even worse.

“So why didn’t you call yesterday?” Kelly says. “Did you go out with the guys?” He’s not really in the mood for some story about how well Stevens is getting along with the guys on his new team, but whatever. This is just how it is and nothing about it is gonna change any time soon.

“Oh, um…” Stevens is really, _really_ quiet for a moment and Kelly actually checks if the call disconnected for some reason. “I was talking to Haley.”

Right. Haley. “How’s she doing? Have you guys figured out when she can move to Seattle?”

“She’s not going to.”

“She’s not?”

“We sort of broke up,” Stevens says.

“You broke up? When? And why? I thought you guys were fine? We’ve been on the phone for ages, how are you only telling me this now?”

Stevens ignores half of his questions and just says, “It wasn’t gonna work.”

“No?”

“No,” Stevens says.

“Why not?”

Stevens sighs the way he always sighs when Kelly asks too many questions. “Because she didn’t really want to move and I didn’t really want her to either, I guess.”

“But you guys were so…” Kelly was going for something like _in love_ , but he actually has no idea how things were going between those two ever since Stevens moved. Stevens mostly just mentioned her in passing. “Weren’t you happy?”

“I mean, yeah, I liked her.”

“But?” Kelly says. He knows he’s prying, but Stevens has never had any problems with telling him to quit it.

“But I should have more than liked her, right?”

“Huh,” Kelly says. “Yeah. I guess. I mean, I’m not actually an expert when it comes to relationships, though, so…” He liked Haley. He thought Stevens was happy with her and, sure, maybe Kelly was a little jealous here and there, maybe he was _ridiculously_ jealous on some days, but that doesn’t mean that he was hoping they’d break up or anything. “You okay, Stevie?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

Stevens doesn’t reply for a few seconds and Kelly can tell that he doesn’t really want to say what he’s about to say. “No.”

“Stevie.”

“What?”

“You wanna talk about it?”

“No,” Stevens says firmly.

“Well, if you change your mind…”

“I’ll be fine, Kells.”

“Okay,” Kelly says, but it doesn’t sit well with him. He hates that he can’t help. That Stevens doesn’t even want him to help. “Are you–”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Stevens interrupts.

“Maybe it’d help if you–”

“Just leave it, Kelly,” Stevens snaps.

Kelly hugs a pillow to his chest. He did it again. Asked too many questions, prodded a little too hard. He should know better by now. “Sorry,” Kelly mutters.

“It’s fine.”

“Dude, don’t say it’s fine when you’re pissed off.”

Stevens huffs. “Just go the fuck to bed, Kelly. It’s late.”

“Why don’t you go the fuck to bed.”

“I’m already in bed.”

Kelly aggressively hugs his pillow. “Well, so am I.”

“Good for you,” Stevens grumbles, and then adds, much softer, “Seriously, Kells, don’t worry about me.”

“I’ll try,” Kelly says. He picks at the corner of his pillow. “Are you mad at me?”

“Yeah, so I’m definitely gonna fight you when you’re in Seattle.”

Kelly laughs. “I’ll be ready.” He tries not to be too relieved that Stevens is already joking around again, but it’s weird not seeing him practically every day anymore. If Stevens decided that he didn’t want to be friends anymore, he could just stop calling, he could stop texting. Kelly is starting to wonder if it’s weird that he texts Stevens every day, if he’s clingy, if Stevens is secretly annoyed with him.

Because of course Stevens is gonna make new friends up in Seattle. And maybe he’s gonna find a new best friend. And maybe Kelly isn’t ready for that.

“I’ll go easy on you,” Stevens says.

“Don’t. I’ll fuck you up,” Kelly says and then Stevens is laughing again.

Whatever. Maybe they’re all right for now.

*

Kelly is trying very, very hard to concentrate on warm-ups, but he keeps seeing Stevens across the ice. They have things to discuss. Kelly’s probably never gonna get used to seeing Stevens in a blue jersey. He fires his puck at Sunny, then he skates to center ice, where Stevens is waiting.

“Hey, Kells,” Stevens says.

“You cut all your hair off and didn’t tell me about it, I’m gonna fight you _right now_ ,” Kelly says without preamble.

“It was a bet. I told you about the bet.”

“You didn’t tell me that there was a chance you’d lose all your hair.”

Stevens gives him a tap with his stick. “It’s not like I’m bald.”

“You might as well be,” Kelly says. In all honesty, he really liked Stevens’ hair. It was all shaggy and curly, and maybe Kelly thought about running his fingers through it once or twice in the past. He actually spent a lot of time randomly tugging at Stevens’ curls, when they were watching movies, or driving to the rink, or just sitting next to each other somewhere. Not that it matters. Stevens isn’t in Vegas anymore.

“So dramatic.”

Kelly punches Stevens in the arm. “It’s like you’re a totally different person.” He looks around. There are only a few people lingering on the ice, amongst them Kent, who’s always the last one to leave. “I’ll see ya in a bit.”

“Yeah, when I fight you.”

Kelly laughs and holds up his fist. Stevens bumps it and people cheer and Kelly suddenly remembers that there’s people watching.

He actually hates skating away from Stevens. The Aces only got to Seattle last night after an afternoon game in Vancouver and Kelly and Stevens didn’t have much time to talk before the game. Afterwards, the Aces are going straight back to Vegas.

Kent gives Kelly a pat on the back before they head back down the tunnel.

*

“Kiddo,” Jeff says as he walks up to Kelly. “How’s it going?”

Kelly looks up from his phone, more than a little wary. Jeff looks like he’s up to something. “Uh, I’m fine,” Kelly says. “Just waiting for Flo.” Flo’s still in the trainer’s room, but Kelly is supposed to give him a ride home from the rink, so he’s basically just loitering, playing with his phone while he waits. 

“Cool,” Jeff says and sits down next to Kelly. “How’re your parents? They coming to that game against the Leafs?”

“Yeah, they are,” Kelly says. Jeff is just asking him normal questions, but he can’t shake the feeling that he’s being interrogated. Or that he’s missing something. Maybe Jeff is trying to distract him while the guys cover his car in post-its. Wouldn’t be the first time. “Uh, Swoops, what–”

“You and Flo are getting along, right?”

“Yeah, sure. He’s a great guy.”

“All right, that’s good,” Jeff says, nodding at Kelly. He chews on his bottom lip, clearly thinking. Then he asks, “Everything else okay?”

“Are you trying to distract me while the guys wrap my gear with wrapping paper again? Because that was funny once, but–”

“No, hey,” Jeff says and gives him a nudge. “I’m just asking.”

“Okay,” Kelly says and it comes out sounding like a question.

“Listen, it’s just… You seem a little, well… I guess it’s just kinda obvious that there’s some stuff on your mind. And I figured I’d ask and see if there’s anything we can do to help.”

“Did Parse put you up to this?” Kelly asks. Because Kent did tell Kelly that he could come to him anytime for whatever reason at least three times during the last two weeks and, sure, Kent is taking the whole captain business seriously, but Kelly was starting to wonder. Because he’s halfway through his third NHL season and if Kent should be telling anyone stuff like that, it’s guys like Flo who are new on the team.

“Nah, not really. I guess we just both noticed that you were a bit quieter than usual, ’s all.”

“Huh,” Kelly says. Is he quieter than usual? Maybe. He’s been thinking about a lot of stuff, about the team, and Vegas, and his life here. He loves this team, honestly, but Vegas still hasn’t really grown on him. Kent told him he’d get used to it, and Kelly’s starting to ask himself how much longer it’ll take. And he’s been thinking about coming out to some of the guys. Kent, first of all, because he’s out and if anyone will have Kelly’s back, it’s him. And Jeff, obviously. The thing is, it’s still scary, and Kelly is pretty sure that it’ll never not be.

“Anyway,” Jeff says, “I’m just gonna sit here for another minute and if you wanna tell me anything, go right ahead.”

Kelly nods. His phone lights up with a tweet notification for Stevens. “Swoops?”

“Hm?”

“You weren’t drafted by the Aces, right?”

“Right,” Jeff says. “The Aeros drafted me. I played for their AHL team for a bit, then they called me up.”

“Are you still friends with some of the guys you used to play with?”

Jeff frowns at him like he wasn’t expecting that question. Maybe it is a weird thing to ask, but Kelly just wants to know if there’s a chance that he and Stevens will still be friends ten years down the line.

“Sort of. You know Hawk? Freddie Hawkins? I used to play with him when we were kids and he got traded to the Aeros when I was still playing for them. I got traded here about a year later and Hawk got traded to the Falcs a couple of years later, but, you know, we still meet up when the Falcs are here or when we are in Providence.”

Kelly hums. He and Stevens still text every day, but the calls are less frequent now that they’re well into the season and they’re both traveling with different teams and their schedules don’t match up in any way at all except for the few times that they’re in the same city.

Jeff gives Kelly’s shoulder a squeeze. “It fucking sucks when your best friend gets traded.”

“I didn’t mean…” Kelly trails off, because of course this was about Stevens and maybe he was stupid to think that it wasn’t obvious right from the start.

“You know, I have a bunch of friends at home that I barely ever talk to during the season, but when I get home and we hang out it’s like we see each other all the time. You don’t have to be in the same place and talk all the time to be friends.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Kelly says. But it doesn’t really loosen that knot in the pit of his stomach. It doesn’t really put him at ease. It doesn’t really erase the thought that there’s a chance that he and Stevens might, eventually, drift apart.

“Hey,” Jeff says, “how about you and Flo come over for dinner tonight?”

“Nah, it’s fine, you guys don’t have to–”

“I promise Kent won’t even touch the food, so it’ll actually be edible. And it’ll definitely be more edible than the stuff you kids cook. Can’t even call that cooking, honestly.” Jeff shakes his head at Kelly and Kelly can’t even protest because he’s useless in the kitchen. “And we can watch the Schooners game. We have a really big TV.”

Maybe hanging out with some of the guys isn’t such a bad idea. “I’ll ask Flo. Thanks, Swoops.”

“Sure thing.” Jeff smiles at him. “Just text me, yeah?”

Kelly nods and Jeff moves to get up and Kelly isn’t sure why he decides that now would be a good time or why he decides that this is the right place, but he grabs Jeff by the sleeve. “Swoops?”

“Yeah?” Jeff sits back down, brown eyes fixed on Kelly. The guys sometimes joke around and call Kelly _Swoops’ little brother_ , because they have pretty much the same eye and hair color, but Jeff is about as pale as a ghost and Kelly really isn’t.

“I, uh…” Kelly didn’t think this through. Well, he did, but he came up with so many ways of saying this that he doesn’t know which one to go for. He’s only ever come out to four people. His mom, his dad, his older sister, and then, two years later, Stevens. And he knows that Jeff is gay, too, he knows that this shouldn’t be a big deal, but saying it out loud still seems sort of impossible.

Jeff gives him an almost imperceptible nod. _Go on, it’s okay_.

Whatever. He can do this. He’s done it before. Kelly takes a deep breath, stares down at his shoes, and says, “I’m gay.”

“Oh,” Jeff says, softly. “Hey, thanks for telling me.”

Kelly looks up then. “I was gonna tell you sooner, but I sort of chickened out. I mean, I knew you were gonna be okay with it, but it still seemed like such a big deal, I don’t know. But now you know. And that’s good. That’s… yeah.”

“No, hey, I get it. It is a big deal.” Jeff fiddles with the necklace he always wears. It has his and Kent’s numbers dangling on it, but he mostly hides it under his shirt. “Does anyone else know?”

“My parents and my sister,” Kelly says. “And Stevens.”

Jeff somehow doesn’t look in the least surprised when Kelly tells him that Stevens knows.

“And you, obviously. No one else, though. And I don’t really want anyone else to know yet,” Kelly mumbles, hoping that Jeff will catch on. The other guys on the team don’t need to know.

“No worries, I’m not gonna say a word to anyone.”

“Thanks,” Kelly says. Well, while they’re at it… “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“It’s personal.”

“I figured.”

“Why did you never tell anyone? Other than the team?”

Jeff thinks for a moment, winding his necklace around his finger again. “Look, I know there’s a lot of talk about this kinda thing and I could have just gone along with Kent, and with Zimmermann, and, y’know, those other guys, and I thought about it a lot, but I guess I just… I’m not ready for everyone to know. It’s probably easier this way. Like, if people knew about me and Kent, the questions would get annoying, ‘specially because we’re on the same team and, yeah… it’s better this way.”

Kelly only hums. He feels like he has more on his mind now than he did before.

“You don’t have to tell anyone. Ever. Not if you don’t want to,” Jeff says. “You don’t owe anyone a thing, okay? It doesn’t make you a coward or anything.”

Kelly just nods, because he’s pretty sure that he’d start crying if he tried to say anything. Jeff remains sitting next to him, hand back on Kelly’s shoulder. Kelly takes a deep breath. “I’m gonna tell Parse.”

Jeff nods. “He’ll probably try to give you the talk, but you go right ahead.”

“What?”

“Nah, I’m kidding. I think.”

Flo comes out of the trainer’s room down the hall and waves.

“I’ll see you kids later,” Jeff says. As he walks away, Kelly notices that Jeff’s shirt has a 90 on the back, not a 14.

*

Sometimes Kelly thinks he’s totally over the whole Stevens thing. Like, the crush thing. And then he thinks that he’s okay with them being friends, and that he doesn’t even want to be anything else, and that everything’s fine the way it is, and that he’ll never think about kissing Stevens ever again.

And then the universe usually decides to remind him that he’s really, absolutely, definitely not over it.

It’s Tuesday morning and it’s one of those rare days that doesn’t start with Kelly’s alarm going off way too early. No practice today, no game, just a day off. The Schooners are playing against the Flyers later today and Kelly wouldn’t miss that game for the world. He promised Stevens that he’d be watching.

Before he crawls out of bed and decides whether or not he should skip his run today, Kelly picks up his phone. There’s a bunch of Twitter notifications, one from last night’s post-game coverage about Kelly’s two goals, and one from Kent, who posted a picture of them on the ice last night, Kent patting Kelly’s helmet, together with another picture from Kelly’s first NHL game that looks strikingly similar – _they grow up so fast #littlekelly_. Kelly replies, says, _man you got old_ , and then pulls up the texts he got this morning. There’s one from his mom, one from his grandma, and one from Stevens.

And Stevens is apparently trying to fucking kill him, because he’s sent Kelly a picture of himself, still in bed, in his old college shirt, his hair, growing out again, sticking up at every angle imaginable. He’s squinting into the camera and looks like it’s totally offensive to him that he has to be awake.

_who th fuck invented morning skate_

_*the_

_eww_

And who the fuck allowed Stevens to take a picture like that?

There’s really nothing Kelly can do. He just imagines it. Waking up next to Stevens. On a morning like this one, on a morning without early-as-hell alarms, on a morning where the sun wakes you up. He imagines it, imagines opening his eyes and being face to face with Stevens. He imagines Stevens looking at him with that barely-there smile of his, he imagines being allowed to stare, imagines having time to look, really look, and decide if there’s more green or more brown in Stevens’ eyes.

Kelly replies with a picture of himself, face half hidden in his pillow and, _shh i’m still asleep_.

Then he takes another look at the picture Stevens sent.

It’s really not fair. Maybe Kelly should just go out and hook up with a guy and stop thinking about Stevens, because Kelly never had a chance with him and he never will. Stevens was dating this girl back in November and it didn’t go anywhere, but still, Stevens is probably gonna have another girlfriend again soon enough and Kelly’s gonna be happy for him. Because he’s a good friend.

Kelly’s phone buzzes.

It’s a text from Stevens, short and sweet as always: _I hate you_.

 _no u dont its ok stevie i know ur not a morning person i forgive u_ , Kelly replies.

_Have you ever even heard of punctuation???_

_u clearly have_

Stevens doesn’t reply, but Kelly is still grinning when he gets up to make breakfast.

*

Kelly would like to say that he doesn’t take _that_ many selfies, and that he’s not on his phone _that_ often, and that he doesn’t spend _that_ much time on Twitter, but that’d be a lie the size of Jupiter. Kelly spends a lot of time on Twitter. Mostly because the Schooners’ social media team constantly posts pictures of the players and, well, Kelly just wants to know what his buddy Stevens is up to, okay?

The first thing Kelly sees after practice is that Stevens is apparently missing from the Schooners’ morning skate today. They didn’t talk much last week because the Schooners were on the road playing in Canada and the Aces were on their bye week and Kelly went to California with a bunch of the guys.

Kelly sends Stevens a quick text to ask if he’s okay, but he’s not really expecting a reply any time soon. He tries not to be worried. It might be nothing. But the Schooners are coming to Vegas next week and if Stevens is injured, there’s a good chance that he’ll be staying in Seattle. And Stevens was playing so well. Kelly didn’t catch a single one of those games the Schooners played in Canada, but he saw the highlights. Stevens racked up an impressive number of points on that trip and Kelly was texting him exclamation points all week.

Kelly’s phone starts ringing while he’s trying to decide if he should order pizza or Chinese food. Flo is taking his girlfriend out for dinner for their one month anniversary and all Kelly kept thinking about when Flo told him was that Stevens always pointed out that monthly anniversaries didn’t even exist because anniversaries only happened yearly. (Apparently that’s what a college education does to people.)

Kelly picks up his phone as soon as he sees Stevens’ name on the screen. “Dude, you okay?”

“Yeah,” Stevens says. “Probably.”

“Probably?”

“It’s just a virus… thing.”

“A virus _thing_?”

“I feel like shit, Kells.” Stevens sighs. “I thought you were all over the Schooners’ Twitter and knew before me that I wasn’t playing tonight due to illness.”

“So you, uh… You didn’t break anything and you don’t have a concussion and you’re not gonna be out for like a month, is that what you’re telling me?”

“I’ll probably be fine in a day or two.”

“You keep saying _probably_.”

“I’ll still come to Vegas next week.”

“You sure?” Kelly asks. Listen. He’s fucking pathetic but he misses Stevens so much that he honestly doesn’t know if he could deal with Stevens not coming to Vegas. Okay, whatever, he’s being overdramatic, but seeing each other four times during the season is… not that often.

“Pretty sure.”

“Okay,” Kelly says. He pushes his takeout menus back and forth on the counter. Stevens would tell him to eat some real food. _Vegetables, Kells, ever heard of them?_ And then he’d probably throw some broccoli at Kelly just to make a point. Kelly really misses living with Stevens. “Well, get some rest, yeah?”

“I just slept for three hours, I guess I can stay on the phone for a bit longer.”

Kelly grins. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you want to tell me something yesterday?”

“You mean yesterday when you fell asleep before I even called you?”

“Hey, I’m sick.”

“I’d totally make you soup or something, but you’re sort of in Seattle, so I guess you’ll have to deal with it all by yourself,” Kelly says.

Stevens laughs softly. “You don’t even know how to make soup.”

“Rude,” Kelly says and abandons his menus to sit down in the living room. “Anyway, are you ready for the story of how I told Kent Parson that I’m gay and talked for five minutes without actually saying anything because I was so fucking nervous? Like, in the end, when I said, ‘What I’m trying to get at is that I’m gay,’ he literally said, ‘Cool, me too. Thanks for sharing.’ I mean…” Kelly shakes his head. He should have expected exactly that. “And he also threatened that he’d give my boyfriend a stern talking to, I–”

“Your boyfriend?” Stevens asks. “When did that happen?”

“No, I don’t have one. Which is what I told Kent, but then he said he still will if I ever have one, so yeah.”

There’s a beat, then Stevens only says, “Oh.” Which is, well, very Stevens.

“If I ever end up with a boyfriend, you’ll be the first one to know, I swear. Not that that’ll ever happen because everyone thinks I’m this super straight hockey dude. The other day Flo’s girlfriend gave me one of her friends’ numbers, and I guess she actually would have been _your_ type. She’s read _Lord of the Rings_ four times, she’s a nerd like you. But, yeah, I don’t know… How do you even find a boyfriend?”

“I, uh–”

“Well, you obviously wouldn’t know, it’s not like you’d want one,” Kelly says. Stevens knows all about finding girlfriends, though. Since he arrived in Vegas, Kelly has only managed to kiss a guy in a club a couple of weeks ago when the whole team went out for Sunny’s birthday. But no boyfriends for him. No dates. Kelly doesn’t do one night stands. He likes knowing a person first; it’s not the same otherwise. Anyway, Stevens sure as hell won’t be able to help him with this. “If you know a guy who likes dudes who talk too much and are really bad at cooking, send him my way. Or I’ll just be single forever. That’s okay.”

“Nah, you won’t be.”

“I’m about as good at flirting as a breadcrumb.”

“At least you’re self-aware.”

“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be on my side?”

“I am,” Stevens says. He sounds tired, but Kelly still keeps talking for a few more minutes. It doesn’t really matter that Stevens doesn’t say all that much. Knowing that he’s listening is more than enough for Kelly.

*

It’s weird to have Stevens back in the condo. It’s weird knowing that tomorrow they’ll play hockey and they’ll play on different teams.

They went out for dinner to that diner a few blocks away from the Aces’ practice rink that they always used to go to, then they headed back to Kelly’s and Flo’s place. Flo is out with his girlfriend because it’s her birthday – Kelly was invited too and he probably could have brought Stevens, but he’d rather just have Stevens to himself, as selfish as it is.

Stevens throws himself onto the couch with a groan. “Too much food.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have ordered those extra fries,” Kelly says and flops down next to him. “Should have eaten some veggies instead.”

“Says the guy who probably hasn’t eaten a single vegetable since I moved out.”

“Hey, I put some tomato slices on my sandwich last week.”

“Tomatoes are fruit,” Stevens says.

“I don’t even like you,” Kelly mutters and pokes Stevens’ thigh with his toe. “I’m gonna fight you.”

“You keep saying that and then all you do is glare at me.”

“Aw, I’m sorry, Stevie. I’ll blow you a kiss tomorrow, all right?”

“Yeah, you know what, I don’t think I like you either.”

Kelly laughs and leans against Stevens, because that’s what they always did. They sat on this couch and watched the most ridiculous movie they could find and Kelly leaned against Stevens and all was right in the world. He missed that. A lot.

“Wanna watch a movie?” Kelly asks.

“Actually…” Stevens shifts but doesn’t scoot away. “Can I tell you something first?”

Two things. Number one: At least Stevens said _first_ , so that means whatever he has to say, he’s still planning on sticking around afterwards. Number two: Stevens is totally about to tell Kelly that he has a new girlfriend, because Stevens went out on a date with someone last week and it sounded like he really liked her. And Kelly now has to prepare to put on his happy face. “Sure, what’s up?” Kelly says. He sits up so he can look at Stevens and– Okay, maybe Stevens isn’t about to tell him that he has a girlfriend. He doesn’t look all that happy.

“So, the thing is,” Stevens says, eyes fixed on the door, like he’s thinking about making a run for it, “I should have told you this a while ago. And I’m not really sure why I didn’t.”

Kelly frowns. “Tell me what?”

“Maybe,” Stevens says, his eyes flicking back to Kelly, “sometimes,” he looks away again, “I’m kinda into guys.”

Honestly? It takes Kelly a moment to process that. Because. He wouldn’t even have _guessed_ that this was what Stevens wanted to tell him and maybe that’s his own fault because he somehow forgot that gay and straight weren’t a person’s only options. “You’re…”

“Bi,” Stevens says.

“Wow,” Kelly says. “Okay. That’s… wow. Stevie.”

Stevens grins. “Are you actually speechless?”

“Shhh,” Kelly says. He needs to get a grip. Because he’s being a really bad friend right now; he should say more than _wow_. “Thanks for trusting me.”

Stevens bites his lip. “I feel like I lied to you.”

“What? Why?”

“I trusted you before. And I was gonna tell you. And then you told me, right at the beginning, and I didn’t wanna ruin your moment or anything. So I thought I’d tell you some other time. And then I never did. It never felt like the right time.”

“That’s okay, Stevie.” Kelly thinks about what Jeff told him. That he’s just not ready yet, and that Kelly doesn’t have to tell anyone a thing if he doesn’t want to. Same goes for Stevens.

Stevens smiles at him and Kelly goes in for hug.

He ends up right on top of Stevens, with his face in the crook of Stevens’ neck. “Is this awkward?”

“Nah,” Stevens says and hugs him closer. “I mean, probably. But it’s us, right?”

Kelly doesn’t even understand what exactly that means, but he still knows that it’s true. “Right,” he says, and sighs, and tries not to hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to let you know: I do not have an update schedule, but I'll try to write the next chapter during the next couple of days. I have a lot of notes already.


	3. Chapter 3

“Who thought it was a good idea to let you anywhere close to a child?”

“Shut up, I’m great with kids,” Kelly says.

Stevens laughs. He’s skyping Kelly from New York and his face is blurry on Kelly’s laptop screen, but it doesn’t matter. It’s really good to see him, to hear his voice. Kelly isn’t sure why talking to Stevens calms him down like nothing else in the world, but it always has, right from the start. Kelly’s not as nervous before games as he used to be, but sometimes, before important games, he still wishes Stevens was there to put his hand on Kelly’s back and tell him to breathe like he used to.

Another _I miss you_ sits on the tip of Kelly’s tongue, and he keeps it there. He never says it, he files it away with all the other things he doesn’t say to Stevens. Because they’re not fair. Because he doesn’t know how. Because he’s scared. And because he’s getting better and better at finding excuses.

“Yeah, sure you’re great with kids,” Stevens says. “Because you’re basically one of them.”

“Did you literally just call me to chirp me?”

Stevens grins. “Yeah.”

Kelly rolls his eyes at Stevens. Honestly, he should have expected this.

The Aces had a bunch of kids visiting today and the Aces’ social media team is nothing but efficient. So now there’s pictures of Kelly being pulled around the ice by two of the girls, and of him picking up one of the boys to celebrate that they got a puck past Sunny, and of him tying laces and handing out water bottles and signing pucks and shirts and jerseys.

And Stevens thinks it’s hilarious, even though he was here for the Kids’ Day last year, and the year before that, and Kelly has no idea what’s so funny about it all of a sudden.

“Fuck off,” Kelly says.

“Oh, come on, those photos are adorable.”

“Well, that’s just ‘cause _I_ am adorable.”

“Suuure,” Stevens says. “Little Kelly with his freckles and his dimples, it’s a shame that there’s no Most Adorable Player award.”

Kelly dramatically flop out of the frame, so Stevens won’t see how ridiculously smitten he looks. _Smitten_. This is what it’s come to. Even though Stevens was just chirping him, for the love of God. “Anyway,” Kelly grumbles, “you certainly wouldn’t win that one.”

Actually, Stevens would have pretty good chances of winning that one.

“So hurtful,” Stevens says with the most deadpan voice imaginable. The video shakes as he moves and then he’s on his side, the camera of his phone ridiculously close to his face.

“Thanks for the close-up,” Kelly says and sits up again. “I almost forgot what your face looks like.”

Stevens’ lips twitch, but he’s apparently done talking for now.

Kelly isn’t sure what to say either. He has a lot of things he could tell Stevens, about his parents’ new dog, or about the really cool Italian place he and Flo found, or about the girl who lives downstairs who keeps checking out Flo.

“So,” Kelly eventually says.

Stevens hums, his eyes half-lidded. No one should look this good when they’re exhausted from traveling and playing a game every other day. Stevens pulls it off, though. “So…”

“My parents named the puppy today,” Kelly says. “They went with Charlie and they put him in an Aces shirt, you know, one of the small ones they keep around for my sister’s kids. I gotta send you that picture later.”

“Cute,” Stevens says. “Can’t wait till you’re home in the summer. You can send me daily puppy updates.”

“How about you just come visit again?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Kelly says. “All the kids like you better than me anyway. And I promise you’ll get to cuddle Charlie.”

“Sounds good.”

“Maybe I should get a puppy.”

“Please,” Stevens says, “you can’t even take care of yourself.”

“Fuck you, I ate a banana today.”

“You did? I’m so proud.” Stevens sits up, the video going blurry again. “Hey, uh, Sandy’s back, so I’m gonna go.”

“Aw, are you talking to your girl, Stevie?” Sandy says in the background.

“Yeah,” Kelly says, “he’s totally talking to his girl. How’s it going, Sandman?”

“Sandman?” Stevens says.

“That’s what we used to call him in juniors,” Kelly says. He only played with Sandy for a year and they weren’t best friends or anything, but Sandy’s a good guy and Kelly always liked hanging out with him. He doesn’t like him on the ice, though. Sandy’s a huge dude and he drops gloves like it’s his job.

Sandy appears next to Stevens. “Did you have to tell him that, Keller?”

Kelly grins. “Sorry, Sandman.”

“Isn’t it past your bedtime, kiddo?”

“You’re, like, three hours ahead of me right now.”

“Yeah, but you’re twelve,” Sandy says.

“Wow, Stevie, don’t you wish you’d decided not to share a room with anyone?” Kelly says, shaking his head at Sandy.

Sandy throws an arm around Stevens. “Ahh, come on, we’re bros.”

Yeah, and Kelly doesn’t feel a tiny stab of jealousy at that. Because that’d be ridiculous.

*

The trade deadline comes and goes, and afterwards Stevens is still with the Schooners and Kelly is still with the Aces, and Kelly is quietly relieved. Getting traded is one of his worst nightmares and he’d hate if one of them ended up on the East Coast.

“They’ll never trade you,” Stevens says when Kelly comes over to his place the day before a game in Seattle in early March.

They’re talking about the deadline, because _of course_ they’re talking about the deadline.

Sure, Kelly knew that he’d most likely get to stay, but, as he said to Stevens a couple of days before the deadline, _no one is really safe_. Unless you’re a player like Kent, who’s been captain for nearly a decade, or a guy like Jeff, who’s keeping the team together, who’s been wearing the A for years. Guys with no move clauses in their contracts basically.

“Maybe one day they’ll wake up and say, ‘Wow, we actually hate Julian Keller, let’s send him to a really shitty place,’ and then it’s goodbye Vegas for me.”

“Yeah, they’re not gonna trade you,” Stevens says again. “You’re one of their best forwards. You’re just a couple of points behind Parse.”

“And behind Bennie and Tay,” Kelly says.

“You’re tied with Tay,” Stevens says, “and two points behind Bennie.”

“Dude, you know my stats better than I do.” Kelly shakes his head at Stevens and then turns his attention back to his pasta. Because he sort of knows Stevens’ states better than his own, too.

They’re sitting at Stevens’ tiny kitchen table in this tiny apartment. He could definitely afford something bigger, but it’s still very… Stevens. Kelly didn’t have time to swing by the last time he was in Seattle, so it’s really about damn time.

Stevens’ apartment is full of books, but otherwise sparsely decorated. It looks like he hasn’t really arrived yet even though it’s been months. The kitchen looks a bit better than the rest of the apartment, though. There’s a potted plant on the windowsill and there’s photos on the fridge, of the Schooners, of Stevens and Sandy, and of Stevens’ family, with his mom and his aunt after a Schooners game, and then there’s a photo from last summer, Stevens and Kelly sitting in the Stevens’ backyard in Massachusetts, both of them beaming at the camera.

“Do you want more pasta?” Stevens asks. He made dinner – pasta and chicken – because that’s just what he does. He’s all grown up and he’s always been, ever since Kelly met him, and Kelly is honestly starting to wonder if he’ll ever reach that level and if he’ll ever feel like an adult and not like a confused kid who’s just pretending.

“Nah, I’m good,” Kelly says. “Thanks, though.”

“All right…” Stevens gets up and picks up Kelly’s plate. He dumps all the dishes in the sink. “Movie?”

“Sure,” Kelly says and shuffles through the doorway into the living room. “That’s a nice blanket you’ve got there, Stevie, did the Schooners give you that so you wouldn’t freeze to death here after living in Vegas for two years?”

“Actually, they did,” Stevens says and joins Kelly on the couch.

“Seriously?”

Stevens shrugs. “It was a joke.”

Kelly grabs the blanket. It’s dark blue and has the Schooners’ logo on it, but– “Fucking hell, this is the softest blanket of all time.”

“I know.”

“Oh my God…” Kelly pulls the blanket up to his chin. “I’m stealing it.”

Stevens grins and snaps a picture.

“You’re gonna put that on Instagram, aren’t you?”

Stevens nods.

“There’s nothing I can do to stop you, is there?”

Stevens, still smirking, shakes his head.

“Whatever, I get to pick the movie, though, right?

Stevens hands him the remote.

“If we lose tomorrow,” Kelly says, “they’re gonna blame me. They’re gonna call me a traitor, they’re gonna tar and feather me, they’re gonna fine me to the moon and back.”

“You’ll survive,” Stevens says. “Anyway, what are the chances that you’ll lose?”

“Dude, you’re not usually that pessimistic.” Kelly ruffles Stevens’ hair. It’s grown out again, curling at the tips. Kelly likes it better this way.

“We’re one of the worst teams in the league right now.”

“So? Doesn’t mean you’ll lose every single game from now until the end of the season. It’s just because your two best forwards are out.”

Stevens hums. “Still. You guys are good. You’re headed to playoffs.”

“Don’t jinx it,” Kelly says. They’re not headed to playoffs just yet. Although Stevens is right, the Aces have a pretty good chance of making it if they don’t start fucking everything up completely for some reason.

Kelly leans against Stevens, head on his shoulder, as he tries to find something for them to watch on Netflix. They’re sitting right next to each other, even though Stevens’ couch is massive, but this is how they used to sit in Vegas, it’s how they sat on Stevens’ bed in Massachusetts, and it’s how they sat on Kelly’s mom’s porch swing. Some things just don’t change.

And Kelly misses this more than anything. Flo isn’t big on cuddling. They sit in the living room together and play video games, and they go out together, and they’re really, really good friends, but it’s not the same. Kelly never actually expected it to be the same. Because Stevens is his guy, and there’s no replacing that. But, hey, they’re still them, and they’re still watching movies together, and they’re still curling up on the couch together, Stevens’ arm slung around Kelly, Kelly slumped against Stevens, only now they do that maybe four times a year and not several times a week.

Every time they come back to this, every time they get to be friends like they used to be, and every time they go their separate ways again, Kelly feels like it gets a little harder. It’s even worse because he’s still stupidly in love with Stevens. It just won’t go away. And obviously he can’t do anything about it, because he can’t go and ruin this friendship, right?

He can’t. So he curls against Stevens on his massive couch in Seattle, in an apartment that Kelly is a stranger in, and pretends that there’s nothing weird about this. Maybe there isn’t. Kelly isn’t sure about anything anymore when it comes to him and Stevens.

“Are you even looking at the titles?” Stevens asks.

“Nope,” Kelly says and puts down the remote. He can’t say anything. He can’t look Stevens in the eye and say, _Oh, by the way, I’ve been in love with you for months and it’s slowly killing me and sitting here with you like this feels like being stabbed in the stomach and I really don’t know what to do about it_. But for a moment there, Kelly thinks about nothing but the relief he’d feel if he just put it out there, and to hell with the consequences. 

“Everything okay, Kells?”

“Yeah,” Kelly says and stubbornly keeps clicking through the movies on the TV screen. “I just hate playing against you.” What he really wants to say is: _I hate that we’re not on the same team anymore and I hate that we’re in the same city only a few times during the season and I hate that I don’t really belong in your life anymore._ Because Kelly doesn’t belong here. He doesn’t. In Seattle, he’s nothing more than a guest. He’s passing through.

“Hm, yeah, it’s more fun being on the same team as you.”

“You should come back to Vegas,” Kelly says.

And they both know it’s not that easy and they both know it’s not going to happen, but Stevens still says, “I should. Maybe I’ll pull it off somehow, huh?”

“Yeah,” Kelly says, “maybe.”

Kelly stops clicking through movies for a moment and the silence that spreads between them feels heavy.

It’s Stevens who eventually breaks it, and nudges him, and says, “You gonna fight me tomorrow?”

“For sure,” Kelly replies. “I’m gonna fight you during warm-ups.”

*

Kelly does not fight Stevens during warm-ups – _duh_ – but before he leaves the ice he makes sure to skate past Stevens and give him a tap with his stick. Stevens grins and taps him back. It’s about the last nice thing that happens on the ice that night.

The Schooners might not have the best chances of making it to the playoffs, but they sure as hell won’t make it easy for the Aces either. Bennie and one of the Schooners’ D-men exchange words after one of the Schooners gets a little close to Sunny. During Bennie’s next shift, gloves go flying.

Kent scores towards the end of the first period, which ends with a scrum in front of the Schooners’ net. The Schooners score early in the second and Stevens gets an assist and Kelly might be happier for him if the game wasn’t tied now.

Kelly scores two minutes later.

They’re tied 3-3 after the second and when he’s back on the ice during the third, Kelly can already feel that they have twenty strenuous minutes ahead of them. He just hopes that this at least won’t go into overtime. And about a minute later it looks like it won’t because Kelly sneaks one past the Schooners’ goalie.

The Schooners aren’t happy.

“Hey, Keller, shouldn’t you be playing on a peewee team?” Sandy bumps into Kelly as they skate over to the faceoff circle.

Kelly ignores him and keeps going. Or at least he tries. Sandy has a hold of Kelly’s stick, grinning at him like he’s pulling off the best prank in the history of time. “Piss off,” Kelly says and shakes his stick.

Jeff skates over to them, jostling Sandy. “Sanders, fuck the hell off.”

Sandy lets go of Kelly’s stick, his full attention on Jeff now. “Doesn’t Parson need you to hold his hand?”

“Hey…” Kelly says. It’s all he manages, because Jeff has already grabbed Sandy by his jersey. Sandy is the first to drop his gloves, but Jeff is right behind him.

Kelly sees the Schooners’ captain, Frederickson, make a grab for Monty, and Kelly usually isn’t someone who gets involved in fights, because he doesn’t stand a chance against most of these guys, but right now he doesn’t care all that much. The Schooners have been playing dirty all night, and Kelly is about to go for whichever dark blue jersey he can get a hold of when Stevens skates up to him and pushes him away from Jeff and Sandy.

Jeff lands his first punch and Kelly winces.

Stevens has an arm wrapped around Kelly’s middle, like he’s the one prone to fighting here. Okay, maybe he was literally just about to skate headfirst into that mess, but Stevens doesn’t know that.

Jeff gets a few more punches in, Sandy lands one square on Jeff’s jaw, but then it’s only a few more seconds of shoving until Jeff takes down Sandy. Stevens sighs. “Ouch.”

“He kinda deserved it,” Kelly says.

Stevens doesn’t argue. He doesn’t let go of Kelly either, not until the refs have pulled Frederickson and Monty apart. Stevens pats Kelly’s bucket. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Kelly says. Why wouldn’t he be?

“All right,” Stevens says and then he skates off towards the Schooners’ bench.

*

_have u seen the latest schooners video yet_

Kelly frowns down at the text from Jeff. In fact, Kelly hasn’t even crawled out of bed yet and has no idea what the hell Jeff is on about. Kelly pulls up the Schooners’ Twitter page and finds a link to one of their Schooners Answer Your Questions videos. _Today our #29 Ezra Stevens answers your questions #AskTheSchooners_ , the tweet reads.

“Oh boy,” Kelly says. He has no idea why Jeff felt the need to text him about this – way too early in the morning, by the way – but whatever Kelly is about to see in this video could potentially kill him.

Kelly hits play with a sigh. Whatever comes next, he probably isn’t ready.

The Schooners really couldn’t have picked a more annoying song for their video intros and while Kelly tries to ignore the song, he wonders what the Schooners’ PR people had to do to convince Stevens to do one of these videos. Maybe he didn’t even have a choice. The song finally fades and then there’s one of the Schooners’ social media people. Ella? Elsa?

“Hi everyone! This is Ellie Rogers for Schooners TV. Today our kid reporter Mia is here to ask Ezra Stevens some questions for this all new episode of Schooners Answer Your Questions.”

The video cuts to a little girl in a Schooners jersey, smiling brightly, sitting next to Stevens, whose hair is looking extra fluffy. Kelly is already not sure if he can deal with this. They both say hello and Stevens waves in the most awkward way possible and ducks his head a little. Kelly knows how much Stevens hates doing interviews like that, but this is ridiculously adorable and if it doesn’t kill Kelly, it’ll make his entire day.

“My first question is…” Mia says and nearly drops her microphone. Stevens catches it for her and his smile looks a hundred times more genuine now. Mia laughs. “So, what was your favorite team when you were a kid?”

“I was a big Bruins fan,” Stevens says. “I grew up not too far from Boston.”

“What…” Mia looks down at her notes. She has little cards with the Schooners logo on them and it’s the cutest thing ever. Kelly should make a case for having kid reporters in Vegas. “What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?”

“Mint chocolate chip.”

“Really, Stevie?” Kelly mutters. “That’s fucking gross.”

It’s a sweet video, but after two more minutes, Kelly still isn’t sure why Jeff sent him a text about it. Stevens talks about his first hockey team and about what he does in his free time, but it’s all pretty regular stuff.

“I read a lot,” Stevens says. “Do you like books?”

Mia nods.

“What’s your favorite?”

“I like Lemony Snicket.”

“Good choice. I’ve always really liked Harry Potter.”

Maybe Kelly shouldn’t be surprised that Stevens would start trading book recommendations with an eight-year-old. They eventually move on to questions about the team, though. Who’s the funniest guy on the team, who pulls the most pranks, and, “Who’s your best friend on the team?”

“Um, probably Sandy. Justin Sanders.”

“And who’s your favorite player?” Mia asks. “On a different team?”

Stevens smiles. “Oh, that has to be Julian Keller. He was my teammate in Las Vegas.”

Kelly pauses the video and takes a deep breath. He gets why Jeff texted him now. He almost wants to call Stevens and chirp him about this. Because his other option is to actually get emotional about it.

In the end, Kelly pulls up Stevens’ contact in his texts and says, _aw i’m your fave??_ , and he adds a bunch of hearts just for good measure.

Stevens doesn’t reply until a while later and Kelly doesn’t read it until after practice. _Who else?_ he sent with one of those kiss emojis and of course it’s a joke, but as far as Kelly is concerned that just made it worse.

Jeff throws a sock at him. “Who’re you texting?” He says it quietly enough so the handful of guys who are still in the locker room don’t hear. The thing with Jeff is that he’s weirdly good at figuring out when people might need to talk about something, but he always sounds like he’s just asking politely. He never pushes it.

And Jeff probably thinks that Kelly’s texting some dude and Kelly could just say, _I’m texting this guy I like, but nothing’s ever going to happen and it fucks me up_ , and he wouldn’t even have to mention Stevens’ name, but there’s no point, right? Jeff can’t help him. So Kelly shrugs and says, “Just Stevie.”

“Ah,” Jeff says and nods. “Of course.”

*

When the Aces win in Houston a few days later, they clinch the first playoff spot in their division.

Stevens texts him about a minute after the end of the game, but Kelly doesn’t see it until the Aces are headed to the airport. Kelly texts back a smiley face, which really isn’t a lot, so he adds, _i’ll call u tmrrw_.

“Good job tonight,” Kent says and gives Kelly’s shoulder a pat before he sits down in his usual seat next to Jeff.

Kelly is way too excited to sleep and the other guys are also a great deal more talkative than they usually are on a late flight back to Vegas. Flo literally can’t sit still and keeps grabbing Kelly by the arm and gives him that look with his big brown eyes, a sort of _please tell me I’m not dreaming_ look. Sunny is already ranking everyone’s projected playoff beard situation – “Sorry, Kelly, but that stuff you had on your face last time couldn’t even be called a beard.”

Kelly flips him off. Which is a huge mistake and after nearly three seasons with the Aces he should know better. Because Kelly does fall asleep eventually and wakes up back in Vegas with a sun drawn on his cheek and with pictures of it all over Twitter and Instagram.

The next morning he wakes up to a text from Stevens, asking him what he did to piss off Sunny.

Kelly tries to call him before the Aces’ morning skate, but the call goes to voicemail. After morning skate he has a missed call from Stevens. On the way to his car, Kelly calls him back, but he isn’t successful this time either. The Schooners are playing a game at five, so that’s hardly surprising.

He watches the game with Flo, they order food and watch as the Schooners blow a three-goal lead and are slowly murdered by the Falconers. It’s painful to watch. The Schooners put their backup goalie in the net after the second period, but it’s too late by then.  The Falcs score two more times, Stevens looks like he sort of wants to murder Jack Zimmermann, and Sandy starts a fight with Mashkov a couple of minutes later.

“Man, the Falcs are really good this year,” Flo says.

They are. And there’s a chance that the Aces will end up playing against them if they both make it to the last round of playoffs. Kelly knows that the Aces could do it this year. They’ve never played better and they all want to win this, but they also wanted it two years ago and they still didn’t make it further than the first round.

Stevens calls some time later and Kelly sneaks out of the living room, leaving Flo frowning at Interstellar.

“Hey, Stevie,” Kelly says. He doesn’t ask Stevens how he’s doing, not after that game. “That was fucking rough, man.”

“Yeah,” Stevens says. “You watched, huh?”

“Yep. The Falcs’ goalie is like a brick wall, dude. I mean, he’s always been good, but I’m pretty sure this is the best season he’s ever had.” He’s also kinda hot, but it’s not like that’s relevant or anything. “At least you got two assists, right? That’s pretty cool.”

“Yeah, sure. It’s just… Well, you know how it is when you’ve lost a bunch of games in a row, it was pretty much the same thing in Vegas last season.”

Kelly slips into his room and flops down on his bed. He doesn’t bother turning on the lights. “Last season was a nightmare,” he grumbles. Stevens might still be in Vegas if they’d played better. He wasn’t the only one who got traded after that season, and sure, it helped, they’re doing a lot better this year, but Kelly still wishes they didn’t have to sacrifice so many great guys for it. Kelly’s pretty sure that last season’s team could have made it to the playoffs, they were just unlucky.

“Anyway…” Stevens says. “At least one of us is going to playoffs.”

“Yeah, dude, everyone’s so excited,” Kelly says. He doesn’t say that he wishes Stevens was still here with them. He doesn’t say that he’d rather win this with his best friend on the team. “Flo is totally losing his shit, but, I mean, we were like that too, right? Remember when I couldn’t sleep the night before the first game?”

“I remember that I couldn’t sleep because you kept kicking me.”

“I still appreciate the sacrifices you made, Stevie.” Kelly sighs. “I’m so nervous. I shouldn’t be, right? I’ve done this before, but I’m really scared that I’m gonna fuck it all up, like… what if I suddenly turn into the worst player in the league, or maybe I’ll never score again, or I’ll–”

“Kells,” Stevens says. “Take a deep breath, all right?”

“You’re really not helping,” Kelly whines. He needs a hug and maybe some cheesecake. And he needs Stevens back on the Aces roster. There’s no point in thinking about Stevens standing behind him and tugging at Kelly’s jersey before they head out onto the ice, because it’s not going to happen – in fact, it’s never going to happen again. Kelly thinks about it anyway.

“Well, how I _can_ I help?”

“I don’t even know.” Kelly closes his eyes. He’s tired and he’s feeling too many things at the same time. Sometimes he wishes there was an off-switch. “I should be happy, right? I shouldn’t be complaining, because this is… this is great. And I’m just whining about it. I mean, I _am_ happy.”

Stevens doesn’t reply right away. It’s not fair that Kelly is dumping all of this on him, because maybe Stevens has stuff he wants to talk about too, and Kelly is too busy with his own problems to listen.

“I’m really sorry,” Kelly mutters.

“For what?”

“For being a selfish ass.”

“It’s fine, Kells.”

“No, it’s not. I always call you and complain for half an hour and you never get to complain. Because I’m selfish. And I talk so much and I never listen to your problems, I’m the most horrible friend ever.”

“Listen…” Stevens has switched to the _I’ve had it with your shit_ voice. “That’s how being friends works. You complain, I listen.”

“But shouldn’t it be the other way around too?”

“It is.”

It is? Of course Kelly listens when Stevens calls him, but he feels like he talks a lot more then Stevens ever does. There’s no balance there. “You’d tell me, right? If I was being a bad friend?”

“Yeah, I would.”

Kelly takes a deep breath. He wants to believe that Stevens would say something, but he’s just not much of a talker, and Kelly can only assume how many things there are that Stevens doesn’t say. “You promise?” Kelly says.

“I promise,” Stevens replies.

“Good.”

Stevens is silent after that and Kelly isn’t sure what to say, because even though Stevens said it was okay, he doesn’t want to complain anymore and he doesn’t want to hang up either, and apparently neither does Stevens. Kelly wonders if he should ask Stevens about his day, or about Seattle, or about the girl he went out for coffee with last week. But he already knows how Stevens’ day went, and Seattle probably hasn’t changed much since the last time Kelly asked, and Stevens already said that it wasn’t that great of a date and he left it at that, so none of that would make for a great conversation topic.

Kelly has no idea how many minutes tick by; he doesn’t check, doesn’t care. It feels, for a moment, like they’re sitting next to each other in the darkness of Kelly’s room, like there are no miles at all between them.

“Did you fall asleep?” Stevens asks and there goes that moment and suddenly he’s a thousand miles away again.

“No,” Kelly says.

“D’you want me to read you a bedtime story?”

“Shut up.” Kelly yawns. He should go to bed otherwise he’ll be completely useless tomorrow morning.

“Hey, Kells?”

“Yeah?”

“You can do this.” Stevens says. “And you should get me a ticket for your first playoff game.”

“What if you guys get a playoff spot?”

At this point, the Schooners have practically no chance at all to make it to the playoffs, but still. “If we don’t,” Stevens says, “can you get me ticket?”

“I’ll get you a ticket for every single game if you want.”

“All right.”

“Thanks, Stevie.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

Kelly hangs up without saying _I miss you_ , as he always does.

*

Stevens flies to Vegas to watch the Aces’ first playoff game. He stays at a hotel because he doesn’t want to “get in the way of things”, even though Kelly tells him that it’d be fine if he stayed at the condo about a hundred times. Stevens won’t have any of that, though, so Kelly doesn’t see him before the game.

He finds Stevens during warm-ups, standing behind the glass with Flo’s little sister, and both Flo’s and Kelly’s parents, the whole group in Aces jerseys. Stevens apparently brought his old one for the occasion. Kelly only sticks around to throw Flo’s sister a puck and to quickly wave at everyone. He’s too nervous to make any attempt at communication or to look at Stevens in his Aces jersey for longer than three seconds.

“Should have known that Stevie would come,” Jeff says when he skates up to Kelly a few minutes later.

“Stevie’s here?” Kent asks.

Kelly nods in the general direction of where Stevens is standing.

“He’s coming to the locker room after the game, right?”

“That’s the plan,” Kelly says.

“Cool,” Jeff says. He grins at Kelly and gives Kent a nudge before he skates off.

They beat the Kings 4-3 and Kelly scores the second goal on a breakaway and at the end of it all, he’s sure that he can do this a few more times. He wants to. They all want to. The locker room is loud after the game, everyone’s joking around, laughing, throwing whatever they can find at Flo as he’s talking to the media about his four-point game, trying his hardest to keep a straight face.

There are a lot of family members and friends milling about, but it only takes Kelly a few seconds to find Stevens. Half the team is all over him, so Kelly goes and hugs his mom and dad first before he squeezes his way through to Stevens. Kelly pulls him right into a hug and he can already see the chirps coming from a mile away, but he honestly couldn’t care less.

“Aw man, they’re at it again,” Sunny says somewhere behind them.

Kelly is probably gonna find a picture of this on Sunny’s Instagram later.

He holds on to Stevens for a little longer than what could be considered a regular hug, but it doesn’t really matter, because it’s Stevens. “Dug out your old jersey for the occasion, huh?” Kelly says.

Stevens shakes his head and turns, so Kelly can get a good look at the number on the sleeve. It’s not a 29, it’s a 65. Kelly’s number.

“You, uh, stole one of my jerseys?” Kelly asks.

“I bought it, you shithead.”

“Oh,” is all Kelly manages to say in a moment of astounding eloquence. Stevens bought his jersey? He could have just asked and Kelly would have sent him one, but no, he had to go and buy one.

Kelly is so not gonna cry about this. Not right now at least.

*

The Aces win the Cup in Vegas after seven hard-fought games against the Rangers. Stevens isn’t there for this one. He’s visiting his family in Massachusetts and he and his mom came down to New York for Game 6, and for all the other games, Kelly got a photo of Stevens in an Aces jersey, sometimes with one of his friends, or his mom, once even with his grandparents, ready to watch the game.

Kelly isn’t overly superstitious, or at least he tries not to be. He has his rituals, sure, he eats chicken before every game, he puts on his left skate first, but that’s about it. And yet those photos Stevens sent him somehow became part of the deal as well.

It doesn’t feel real when the clock runs down. It doesn’t feel real when the crowd erupts. It doesn’t feel real when they all jump out onto the ice. Kelly watches in a daze as Kent is handed the Cup, as Kent hands it over to Jeff. It doesn’t feel real until Bennie hands it over to Kelly and he’s actually touching it.

They did it. They made it all the way here and little Julian Keller, who always got teased for being so scrawny when he was a kid, is a Stanley Cup champion.

Kelly only thinks about how he’d have given the Cup to Stevens if he was here for the briefest of seconds. Then he hands it over to Tay.

*

“I’m really sorry that I called you at three in the morning.”

“It was four, actually,” Stevens says.

Oh well. Time zones.

“And I have no idea what you were trying to say to me, by the way,” Stevens goes on. “There was a lot of shouting. Pretty sure I heard Sunny sing _We Are The Champions_.” He’s sitting in his parents’ backyard on a striped beach chair and he’s wearing sunglasses and he doesn’t have a shirt on.

It’s Kelly’s own fault that he’s reaching a whole new level of frustration, because he was the one who insisted on calling Stevens on Skype. “I have no idea what I was trying to say either, I was totally wasted,” Kelly says. He drank too much of whatever the guys kept pouring into the fucking Stanley Cup. “But yeah, Sunny was definitely singing.”

Stevens laughs. “Man, I wish I could have been there.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Nah, Kells, come on, don’t make that face, I didn’t mean it like that.”

Kelly sticks out his bottom lip. He’s pretty sure that Stevens did mean it like that. It must suck so much to get traded and then a year later your former team wins the Cup. It’s not fair. “Yeah, but…” Kelly trails off when the video freezes.

For a moment all Kelly sees is Stevens’ stubbly chin and his neck and a bit of collarbone. Honestly, Kelly is never skyping him in the summer ever again.

“Anyway,” Stevens says, “you’re gonna have the Cup for a day, right?”

“Right. Wanna come by and eat ice cream out of it?”

Stevens’ smile is so bright that it could light up the entire universe. “Yeah, totally.”

“And maybe you can stay for a couple of days?”

“Sure,” Stevens says. “I love hanging out with your mom.”

Kelly glares.

“You’re all right, too.”

“Excuse you, I’m a lot better than _all right_ ,” Kelly says.

“I know,” Stevens says, his smile sheepish.

Kelly flips Stevens off. Actually, he wants to flip the entire universe off. How is he ever supposed to get over Stevens? He can’t, not if Stevens keeps smiling at him like that. He almost wants to ask Stevens how to stop being in love with someone, because Stevens always has all the answers.

Instead he says, “So I’ll see you in a couple of weeks?”

“Definitely,” Stevens says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so, so much for all your lovely comments, they seriously mean the world to me!!


	4. Chapter 4

Thunder clashes, but it’s not what wakes Kelly up. He’s wide awake already. He’s been wide awake ever since he lay down on the most uncomfortable air mattress known to mankind. Stevens is sleeping in Kelly’s bed. There’s no way that Kelly would make him sleep on this air mattress from hell.

Stevens has been here for a couple of days, arrived the day before Kelly had the Cup, and obviously all of Kelly’s relatives turned up for it as well, so the Kellers’ house is pretty much bursting at the seams, because everyone’s sticking around for Kelly’s dad’s fiftieth birthday in a couple of days. So Kelly’s uncle and his wife are staying in the guest room, his cousin is on the living room couch and his aunt is staying in Kelly’s sister’s old room, and Kelly and Stevens are sharing Kelly’s childhood bedroom.

They squeezed the air mattress between Kelly’s desk and his bed. It’s nowhere near big enough for him and it makes weird noises every time he moves. Seriously. When he turns over, the mattress makes a weird noise. When he breathes, the mattress makes a weird noise. When his pinky twitches, the mattress makes a weird noise.

It’s less than ideal.

If the thunderstorm isn’t keeping Stevens awake, Kelly’s tossing and turning probably is. Kelly knows for a fact that Stevens isn’t a huge fan of storms – even though he’d never admit it – so he’s probably awake anyway. Kelly could strike up a conversation. He should, because he’s pretty sure that he’s not going to sleep anytime soon.

It’s not because Kelly has a problem with storms, he actually likes them, the patter of the rain, the thunder. So, yeah, that’s not why he’s currently staring at the ceiling. It’s just… Stevens. He’s here. And it’s a lot. It’s nice and Kelly’s happy that he’s here, that he was here to eat ice cream out of the Cup with him, that he’ll be here for Kelly’s dad’s birthday, but Kelly’s becoming more and more aware of how easy it would be to just say _fuck it all_ and do something really, really stupid.

They were sitting on the porch swing earlier, both of them with a beer, Kelly idly prattling on and on about his grandma’s lasagna (which she’ll be bringing tons of for the birthday festivities in a couple of days). And they were much closer than strictly necessary, their arms pressed together, and while he was talking, Kelly’s thoughts always kept going back to how he could just reach over and take Stevens’ hand.

Sometimes Kelly thinks that Stevens must have noticed by now. He must have noticed that Kelly can’t keep his eyes off him.

A flash of lightning lights up the room and Kelly can hear the sheets rustle as Stevens shifts before the next crack of thunder. “You awake?” Kelly mutters. It’s not like he wants to wake Stevens up if he’s actually sleeping.

“Yeah,” Stevens says.

Kelly sits up so he can peer over the edge of the mattress. He can’t see all that much in the darkness, but he’s pretty sure that Stevens’ eyes are wide open. “Sup,” Kelly says.

Stevens laughs quietly. “Nothing much.”

“Can’t sleep?” Kelly asks, even though it’s pretty obvious. He just doesn’t want to ask outright why Stevens is awake right now, but Kelly’s best guess really is that storm.

“Nope,” Stevens says. He doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t offer an explanation, but Kelly wasn’t really expecting one anyway. Stevens talks even less in the middle of the night.

“Me neither.”

“Yeah,” Stevens whispers.

It’s probably one of their most ridiculous conversations. Even more ridiculous than all the ones they’ve had about Kelly’s severely lacking vegetable consumption.

“That mattress is pretty horrible, huh?” Stevens says.

“I’d say the farting noises it makes are the most horrible.”

“That wasn’t you?”

Kelly grabs a pillow and whacks it over Stevens’ head. “You’re fucking rude, Stevie, did you know that? I’m letting you sleep in my bed and this is how you thank me? You’re such a little shit.”

“You’re gonna wake everyone up,” Stevens says.

“Totally your fault.”

“Yeah, right.”

“It is,” Kelly says and reaches out to poke Stevens in the ribs.

Stevens snorts out a laugh.

Kelly gives him another poke. “See? It’s you who won’t stop giggling.”

“I’m not… _giggling_.”

“You so are,” Kelly says and starts to tickle him, but Stevens quickly squirms out of the way. He’s totally still giggling, though. It’s kinda cute.

“I’m being attacked,” Stevens wheezes. “Are you done?”

“I don’t know,” Kelly says. “Maybe.”

“Who’s a little shit now?”

Kelly laughs. “The NHL should have, like, a Little Shit of the Month thing.”

“You’d win every single month, no doubt about it.”

“I’m glad you have so much faith in me.”

Stevens hums. He’s still on the other side of the bed, safely out of reach.

“Are you going to stay over there?” Kelly asks.

“Yeah.”

“Can I come up?”

“Only if you stop with the tickling.”

“I’ll be good,” Kelly says and climbs up into bed, the air mattress making the loudest farting noise yet. “I hate that fucking mattress.”

“You–” Stevens falls silent when lightning flickers again. The thunder that follows isn’t nearly as loud as it was before, though.

“It’s nearly over,” Kelly mumbles.

Stevens breathes out softly, almost like he’s relieved. Honestly, he could have just asked Kelly to come up here earlier, but Stevens isn’t the kind of guy who asks another guy to climb into bed with him. Especially not because he’s scared of a storm. He’s too much of a dude for that.

“When I was a kid,” Kelly says, “I watched Monsters, Inc. with Jen and then the next day she hid in my closet and scared the crap out of me and I refused to sleep in a room with a closet for like a month after that. Like, I just took all my stuff down to the living room, I wouldn’t come back up here, even though I knew it was just Jen. I was just scared that she’d do it again.”

“But you did come back up here?”

“Yeah, I made my parents promise that Jen wouldn’t get any more candy for the rest of her life if she tried something like that again.”

“No candy, huh? That’s harsh.”

“She would have deserved it. Always pranking her poor little brother.”

“Says the guy who puts candy in people gloves.”

Kelly grins. “Who doesn’t like a little surprise?”

“Yeah, you really are a little shit.”

“It’s part of my charm.”

“What charm?”

“Come on, Stevie, don’t destroy the little self-confidence I have.”

“Sorry, kiddo.”

“Don’t _kiddo_ me, I’m all grown up.”

“Sure you are,” Stevens says and pats Kelly’s arm. “The most grown up of all grown-ups.”

“Damn right.”

They keep mumbling to each other for a little while as the thunder becomes nothing more than a distant rumble and the rain eases up. Kelly has no idea for how long they’ve been talking and he’s too lazy to reach over to his phone and check what time it is.

“S’quiet now,” Kelly says and yawns. He should go back down to his air mattress, but now that he’s up here and all cozy, it’d seem like a punishment. He doesn’t want to ask Stevens if he can stay either. He’s not even sure why he thinks that he has to ask, because he used to fall asleep in Stevens’ bed all the fucking time and he never asked.

Stevens hums and shifts and says, “I talked to Haley the other day, did I tell you?”

“Nope, you didn’t,” Kelly says, even though they both know perfectly well that he didn’t. But hey, it’s so like Stevens to bring this up now, in the middle of the night, completely out of the blue.

“Yeah, well, I talked to Haley. Just to catch up.”

“Cool,” Kelly says. He tries not to put any judgement into it, because he liked Haley and it’s not like she went and broke his best friends heart or anything. They broke up because they both thought it was for the best, at least according to what Stevens told him. “How’s she doing?”

“She started seeing someone.”

“Oh,” Kelly says. “And… how do you feel about that?”

“Kells, come on…”

“What? I’m just asking. Maybe you’re sad about it… Are you sad about it?”

“No,” Stevens says and even though it’s dark and Kelly can’t be sure, he knows that Stevens just rolled his eyes.

“Okay, so you’re not sad. That’s good. You’ve moved on.”

“I was seeing other people.”

“Yeah for three seconds on average,” Kelly says. “You never really… I don’t know. You just went out on a bunch of dates. That’s not the same thing.”

“Fine whatever. I’m happy for her, though.”

“All right,” Kelly says and it comes out sounding like a question. He’s not sure where this conversation is going, because it definitely _is_ going somewhere. And Stevens definitely didn’t _sound_ happy. “Are you sad because it didn’t work out with any of the girls you met in Seattle?” It’s just a shot in the dark, but if Stevens isn’t gonna stop being vague, Kelly’s just gonna have to guess.

“I’m not _sad_.”

“You sound a bit sad, though.”

“No, I’m just… frustrated.”

“Because?”

“Because…” Stevens takes a deep breath. “When I was home the other week, I went out with a bunch of friends and we were at some club and there was this guy…”

Stevens is really the master of badly-placed meaningful pauses. Kelly doesn’t want to fill in the blanks, he wants to hear the whole story. “And?”

“And we talked.”

“And?”

“It’s really not that important.”

“Just tell me what happened with the guy, Stevie.” What Kelly actually wants is for Stevens to tell him that absolutely nothing happened with that guy, because he doesn’t want to end up being consumed by jealously. Although maybe it’s already too late for that.

“As I said, we talked. And he didn’t know a thing about hockey. He had no idea who I was. And we got along, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Well, my friends wanted to leave and he said he’d give me his number if I wanted it. And I said, ‘No thanks’. He was really nice about it, but…”

Kelly knows for a fact that he should not be relieved right now. He rolls onto his side, so he’s looking at Stevens, who’s staring at the ceiling. “Why’d you say no?” Kelly asks.

“I was scared,” Stevens whispers. “I was just really, really scared.”

And Kelly wants to ask why, but he feels like Stevens could really use a hug right now, so he doesn’t ask and just scoots closer and wraps an arm around him. “That’s okay, Stevie.” Because it is okay. It’s okay to be scared of saying yes to something that could change your life, and it’s okay to be scared of someone finding out something you’ve been keeping a secret, and it’s okay to be scared of being who you are. Just like it’s okay to be scared of storms.

“I don’t want to be scared, though.”

“Maybe one day you won’t be,” Kelly says. Actually, no, that’s bullshit. “Or maybe one day you’ll ignore that you’re scared and say yes anyway.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Kelly is trying to think of encouraging things to say, but he’s stuck in pretty much the same place that Stevens is stuck in. He could come out. He wouldn’t be the first one, but it’d still be a big deal. And he doesn’t want that, not yet, or maybe not ever. Or he could just go out with guys and never make an official statement and live his life, but people would still be watching.

Anyway, he doesn’t even want to go out with random guys, because there’s still that one specific guy he really, really likes. The guy he’s currently lying next to. The guy he’s hugging awkwardly. That guy.

Fucking hell, Kelly just really needs to let go. In every sense of the word. For now, he just pulls away his arm, though. “Guess we should sleep.”

“Yeah,” Stevens says. “You gonna sleep up here?”

That thing about letting go? So not happening tonight. “Yeah, that mattress deserves a break.”

“Definitely does,” Stevens says. “Night, Kells.”

“Night, Stevie. I’ll try not to you kick you.”

Kelly grabs his blanket and makes sure he’s at the very edge of the mattress. It’s not just about the kicking. Kelly always finds something to hug in the course of the night and it’s either a pillow or a bunched-up blanket or a person. He’s woken up cuddled up to Stevens more than once, although Stevens usually successfully manages to push him away, or Kelly scoots away before Stevens even notices.

Not this time, though.

This time, when he wakes up, Kelly is tucked against Stevens and Stevens has an arm wrapped around him and their legs are tangled and it’s _horrible_ , except that it really isn’t, because Stevens’ shirt smells really nice. Kelly is pretty sure that Stevens’ fingers are actually curled into the back of his shirt and Stevens is still breathing softly, so Kelly really can’t move and wake him up, right?

But that doesn’t change that he should. This is just gonna hurt in the end.

Thankfully Stevens takes the _to move or not to move_ decision away from him about a minute later. Stevens sniffs and twitches a bit and then he hugs Kelly even closer and that was _so_ not supposed to happen.

“Stevie, ‘m not a teddy bear,” Kelly grumbles. Keep it humorous. That’s good. He’s definitely not dying a little right now. Nope. Not at all.

“Hm? Oh…” Stevens lets go of Kelly’s shirt and smooths it down, but he doesn’t move away and his arm stays loosely draped around Kelly. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to squeeze you to death or anything.”

“Yeah, that’s what you’re saying now, but you’re probably just here so you can eliminate your competition,” Kelly says. “Because who’s gonna believe that you actually cuddled me to death, right? It’s the perfect crime.”

“Please stop being so awake,” Stevens mutters.

Kelly sighs. “Okay.”

“Sorry, I kinda just told you to shut up, didn’t I?”

“It’s fine,” Kelly says into Stevens’ shirt. Fuck it all, right?

*

They get up a little while later and nothing has changed, really.

They go out for a run and they play with Kelly’s cousin and they take her and Kelly’s niece out for ice cream and in the evening the entire family goes out for dinner and afterwards Kelly and Stevens watch a movie on Kelly’s laptop.

And Kelly doesn’t mean to fall asleep next to Stevens again. But he does it anyway.

*

“Alarms were invented by the devil,” Kelly mutters as he makes a grab for his phone, but all he manages to do is to push it on the floor. His alarm keeps going, so Kelly actually has to move and fish it out from under his bed to turn it off.

“Finally,” Stevens says when it’s quiet again.

“You have five minutes to wake up,” Kelly says and sits up. They promised Kelly’s mom that they’d go grocery shopping for his dad’s birthday party, so they actually need to get their asses out of bed, because Kelly’s mom wants to get started on the first cake after lunch.

“I’m totally awake,” Stevens says, but he still hasn’t moved and his eyes are still closed, so Kelly’s guessing that it’ll take at least another fifteen minutes for him to even consider getting out of bed.

This morning he thankfully didn’t wake up with his face pressed into Stevens’ shirt. He still had his foot hooked around Stevens’ ankle, but it could have been worse. He’s pretty sure that he kicked Stevens at least twice last night and he sort of remembers mumbling an apology each time. He still feels a bit guilty. The thing is, Kelly is so not going back to sleeping on that air mattress, so Stevens is gonna have to deal with the kicking.

And Stevens doesn’t mind sharing the bed anyway. Last night he just went to lie down on the right, leaving room for Kelly on the left and that was that. Kelly keeps telling himself that it’s not a big deal. That nothing’s changed.

Anyway, Stevens is leaving in a couple of days.

Kelly sits next to Stevens for a moment longer and tries not to think about how soft his hair looks. (Really soft. It looks really, really soft.) Eventually, he gets up and pulls away the sheets, so Stevens won’t even think about going back to sleep.

“Hate you,” Stevens says and rolls onto his stomach.

Well, Kelly hates that Stevens sleeps in stupidly tight boxer briefs. And he hates that he looked. Just for a second. Which was definitely a second too long. He’s a bad friend. A terrible friend. Friends don’t check out their friends.

Kelly quickly ducks out of his room and finds Charlie in the hallway, tail wagging, coming up to Kelly to have his ears scratched. Stevens always says he’s actually more of a cat person, but whenever they’re in the same room, there’s a ninety-nine percent chance that Stevens is petting Charlie. Kelly has snuck a couple of pictures of the two of them; he might put one or two of them on Instagram when Stevens is back in Seattle and can’t plot his immediate revenge.

And of course part of Kelly is sad that Stevens is leaving so soon, but another part of him just really needs that distance back, otherwise he’s totally gonna lose it.

*

Kelly finds Stevens sitting on the porch swing, feet propped up on the small table next to an empty glass, a book in his lap, curls hanging into his eyes. The light’s starting to fade and he probably won’t be able to read without turning on the porch light – and attracting every bug in the world – for that much longer.

After dinner, Kelly helped his dad with the dishes and they both refused to let Stevens help, so Kelly’s mom handed him a glass of lemonade and ushered him out of the kitchen. And now he’s sitting on that porch swing like he belongs there.

And, in all honesty, he does.

Kelly doesn’t want to think about all the summers yet to come. He doesn’t want to think about whether or not Stevens will come back here next year, or the year after that. Because Kelly wants this to go on forever, but he knows that, in the grand scheme of things, _forever_ doesn’t exist.

Before he can think himself into an existential crisis, Kelly clears his throat. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Stevens says and puts down his book. “Can I help you guys with anything? I feel pretty useless sitting out here.”

“Nah, we’re all set for tomorrow,” Kelly says. He sits down next to Stevens, the swing creaking quietly. “They’re gonna play Monopoly in a bit and they said we can come inside and join them if we want to… Please tell me you don’t want to.”

“I think I’m good.”

“Thank you.” Kelly props up his feet as well. “You can keep reading if you want, I don’t mind.” Because it looks like Stevens was right in the middle of chapter and Kelly knows how much he hates it when he doesn’t get to finish one.

Stevens smiles and picks up his book; Kelly scrolls through Twitter and then replies to a couple of texts. Sunny had the Cup today and blew up the Aces’ group chat with pictures of him taking it out on his dad’s boat. Now there’s a debate going on about fining people who post more than two pictures, or three if there’s a puppy.

Kelly sends a few texts back and forth with Jeff, whispers, “Swoops says hi,” to Stevens and then puts down his phone. He starts rocking the swing back and forth and Stevens lets him. Kelly leans his head against Stevens’ shoulder and closes his eyes, listening to the sound of Stevens turning the pages of his book and of his relatives’ laughter in the living room, and to the buzz of the insects. He could probably fall asleep out here.

“Are you tired already?” Stevens asks, followed by the low thud of a book being set down. 

“Yeah, looking at all that cake and not getting to eat any was exhausting. And my mom even made that lemon cake. I love that lemon cake so much, you have no idea.”

“I’m already not sure how I’m gonna survive eating all that food tomorrow.”

“The neighbors are gonna bring food, too. Oh, by the way, I should warn you… Linda Jackson from down the street is coming. Remember her? She checked you out the other day when we ran past her house.”

“What if she was checking you out?”

“Dude, that’s gross,” Kelly says. “She’s known me ever since I was like… super tiny.”

“You’re still super tiny.”

“You come into my house…” Kelly pokes Stevens’ thigh. He’s probably lucky that he doesn’t break his finger. “Whatever, I’m still gonna help you hide from Linda. Because who knows what she’s gonna try after a bottle of wine.”

“Now I’m getting scared.”

“I’ll make sure she won’t get you,” Kelly says. “Not sure what I’m gonna do about all the other drunk ladies, though. It’s really not a Keller party if there aren’t loads of drunk people.”

Stevens snorts. “So how drunk are we gonna be?”

“Very,” Kelly says. “My dad’s probably gonna start singing at some point with his buddies from work. He also played hockey when he was a kid and I think he kinda regrets that he never had time to start a band when he was younger.”

“It’s never too late.”

“Don’t tell him that, he’s gonna throw out my bed so he can have band rehearsals in my room.”

“I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

Kelly shifts a little. He’s still slumped against Stevens and he’s not sure why it feels strange to him all of a sudden. They’ve always been like this, but Kelly is starting to think that maybe he’s lying to himself. Has it really always been like this? Were they this close in Vegas?

At this point, Kelly can’t tell if they’re on the brink of slipping into something else. Something that’s more than friendship. It feels like they’re closer, it feels like it’s different somehow, but in the end it’s just that, a feeling.

Kelly keeps rocking the swing back and forth as the sun sets, and they don’t talk. The air’s starting to get cooler and they should probably go back inside in a bit, but they’d have to walk through the living room, past Kelly’s most likely drunk, Monopoly-playing relatives and he feels like that’d sort of destroy the peace. He can hear them laughing from out here, too, but it seems far away, like they’re in a different universe.

In the low light, Kelly can see Stevens’ hand, resting on his thigh, and it’s one of those moments where it just seems so easy. What if he just reaches out? What’s the worst thing that could happen?

Stevens could hate him until the end of time.

Except he never would, because he’s Stevens. So what’s _actually_ the worst thing that could happen? Well, Stevens would probably say something really mature like, _Sorry, Kells, but that’s crossing a line_. And then he’d be all reassuring and nice about it, because that’s just who he is.

Or maybe he just… wouldn’t mind. Kelly isn’t good at math and he has no idea what the chance of that is, but there probably is a chance.

So he moves his hand. Just a little bit. And that’s not gonna get him anywhere, Kelly knows that. It’s like he said to Stevens the other day, he has to ignore that he’s scared and do it anyway. So he moves his hand a little more and curls his fingers around Stevens’. “Is this awkward?”

Stevens turns over his hand, palm up. “It’s fine.”

At some point in the past, they had this exact conversation. “Because it’s us?”

“Yeah,” Stevens says. “Because it’s us.”

So maybe it’s not a big deal, and maybe this is something they can do without it meaning anything, but that doesn’t change that Kelly wants it to mean something. He feels like he’s lying, because he’s pretending that this is less than it actually is, but Stevens’ hand is warm against his and his heart feels like it’s about to explode, so, for now, Kelly will take the lie if he can’t have anything else.

*

Kelly squeezes past his dad’s colleague Maureen and their next door neighbor Clive, who are standing so close together that Kelly is pretty sure that Maureen’s hand will be on Clive’s ass in about half a minute. Maybe he’ll find them making out against a tree later.

It’s barely past six and Kelly’s pretty sure that everyone at his dad’s birthday party is already at least a little tipsy. Kelly just got himself a gigantic burger – his uncle is manning the grill right now and Kelly is hoping sincerely that he won’t have to take over – and now he’s looking for Stevens.

They put up chairs and tables in the backyard this morning, and there’s one table with food and several coolers that Kelly’s mom keeps refilling. They even have a kids’ table. They’re prepared for this sort of thing; the Kellers aren’t amateurs.

He finds Stevens sitting on the porch swing with a plate of Nana Keller’s lasagna.

“Already hiding from Linda Jackson?” Kelly asks. He frowns at the table in front of them. “Is that a margarita?”

“Yep, your mom gave it to me.”

“Don’t drink anything my mom hands you, you’re gonna die.”

Stevens makes a face. “It looks really good, though.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, eh?” Kelly says and picks up his burger. “She’ll keep handing you things.”

She does keep handing Stevens things. More drinks, mostly. But also cupcakes. And chocolate cake. She hands cake to Kelly, too, but she’s not actively trying to get him drunk because she needs him to carry drinks and empty dishes.

Kelly never gets to sit next to Stevens for long; his mom always shows up, saying something like, “Julian, sweetheart, could you…” Get more beer from the fridge downstairs, put that empty cake tray in the kitchen, go get a dish towel because someone spilled their drink. And Kelly doesn’t mind, but he still keeps an eye on Stevens all the while.

Stevens looks ridiculously good today. He’s wearing that shirt with the dark blue stripes that’s actually nothing special, but it looks so good on him that Kelly kinda wants to die a bit. He can’t stop thinking about last night either. They held hands and then they lay down in bed together with more than enough space between them and woke up this morning all wrapped up in each other, even though Kelly tried to scoot away every time he woke up during the night and noticed that he was back in the middle of the bed and right next to Stevens.

He thinks about Stevens’ hand on his back this morning, thumb tracing circles.

He thinks about the lazy smile on Stevens’ face when Kelly told him that they needed to get up soon.

He thinks how much he wanted to kiss Stevens right then.

He’s a godawful mess.

It’s already started to get dark when Kelly flops down next to Stevens again, this time on the porch steps. “I think I just talked to every single person at this party.”

“I think I jus’ had my fiftieth margarita,” Stevens says, his tongue slow on catching up with all those words.

Kelly pats Stevens on the back. “I told you…”

“You did, you told me and I didn’t listen,” Stevens says. “Your mom is relentless.”

“You can’t be that drunk if you’re still using words like _relentless_.” Somehow Kelly’s hand is still on Stevens’ back, resting right between his shoulder blades. He leans closer. “Seriously, though, you okay?”

“Yeah, the world’s just moving a little too quickly right now.”

“I could get you some water.”

“Nah, ’s not that bad.” Stevens grins at him, a little wider than usual. “I think I’m gonna eat some more cake.”

“I bet your nutritionist is gonna hate you for this.”

“I’m on vacation.”

“Really, visiting me in Canada is a vacation to you?”

“I’m abroad,” Stevens says. “Everything’s different. Your milk is weird.”

“Will you stop with the milk?”

“It’s in _bags_.”

“Stevie, it’s–”

“Julian, could you do me a favor and help me light all those candles?” Kelly’s mom says as she walks up to them and practically throws a lighter at Kelly. It flies right over Kelly’s head and skitters across the porch.

“It’s a good thing you’re not a goalie,” Stevens says.

Kelly gives him a shove and gets up. His mom is such a candle person. Granted, it does look nice in the end, with candles flickering on the tables and on the porch railing, but maybe they wouldn’t have needed quite as many.

When Kelly is done with the candles, Stevens is gone and the porch steps are empty. Kelly finds him quickly, though. Linda Jackson has finally cornered him over by the table with the cake – which is looking awfully empty. She’s talking to him, maybe standing a little closer than strictly necessary, but at least she seems to remember that personal space is a thing.

Kelly assumes that Stevens still wouldn’t mind being rescued, so he walks over and throws an arm around Stevens. “Hey, Linda, how’s it going? Do you need some more wine?”

“Your mom’s got me covered, don’t worry. I was just talking to your friend here. Plays hockey too, I hear.”

“Yeah, he does. Actually, do you mind if I steal him away real quick? I need help carrying some stuff.”

Linda only looks mildly disappointed when Kelly pulls Stevens away.

“You need help carrying some stuff, huh?” Stevens asks when they’re out of earshot.

“Yep, let’s just grab…” Kelly looks around. “How about those empty trays?”

“Yeah, those definitely need to be carried… somewhere.”

“Kitchen.”

They each pick up a bunch of empty cake tins and trays and then duck into the house. The kitchen is already a graveyard of dirty dishes. It seems weirdly quiet inside after the laughter and chatter that was floating through the backyard.

Kelly leans against the counter with a sigh.

“What are you sighing about?” Stevens asks and ruffles Kelly’s hair. “Too much cake?”

“Nah, there’s no such thing as too much cake,” Kelly says.

Stevens laughs. “‘Course not.”

Kelly sighs again. They’re right next to each other. Seriously, there’s not even an inch between them and Kelly could just lean to the right, just a little bit. After a couple of beers, it doesn’t even seem like a bad idea, so he just does it.

He looks up at Stevens, who’s smiling, cheeks red. It’s probably that stupid striped shirt, because Stevens just looks so damn good in it. That’s probably why Kelly reaches out and trails his fingers down Stevens’ spine.

Stevens tenses at first, then his smile grows even wider. He nudges Kelly’s jaw. “You’re drunk,” he says softly.

“So are you,” Kelly says and tries to boop Stevens’ nose. He only sort of manages and they both start laughing and suddenly it’s so easy to lean in. Kelly’s hand is on Stevens’ cheek and Stevens puts an arm around him to pull him closer and there’s no room between him, they’re as close as they can possibly be. Stevens’ nose bumps against Kelly’s and–

“Julian?”

Kelly jumps away from Stevens so fast that he nearly trips over his own feet. “Yeah?”

Kelly’s mom appears in the doorway, a glass of wine in hand. “There you are. Could you boys do me a favor and get a few more bottles of wine from the basement?”

“Sure,” Stevens says. He sounds like he just ran a mile.

Kelly nods. “We’re on it.” He can’t look at Stevens; he’ll drop dead on the spot if he does.

They spend the rest of the party getting very, very drunk. And Kelly tries very, very hard not to think about what might have happened in that kitchen if his mom hadn’t shown up.

*

When Kelly wakes up the next morning he feels half-dead. He’s curled against Stevens, because of course he is, but thankfully Stevens is still fast asleep and doesn’t wake up when Kelly rolls away. He grabs a bottle of water from the nightstand and downs half of it and somehow he feels better but also worse than he did before.

Kelly only vaguely remembers stumbling into his room with Stevens at his heels, but he’s pretty sure that he never even considered sleeping on the air mattress. He somehow managed to take off his shoes and his shorts. Stevens is still wearing the striped shirt from last night.

Kelly lies back down and now Stevens is looking back at him. His eyes are extra green this morning. “Kells…”

Kelly only raises his eyebrows.

“Last night…”

Kelly nods. He knows what this is about. They nearly kissed. Kelly nearly kissed Stevens in his parents’ kitchen last night. Or Stevens nearly kissed him. Whatever. That happened. _Nearly_.

It’s too early for this. And Kelly is too hungover for this, too.

“It just would have messed everything up, right?”

Kelly realizes that Stevens is putting this choice on him and he hates him a bit for that. He can say, _Yeah, it would have ruined everything, it’d never work, we live too far apart_ , or he can say, _Actually, no, this could actually be something and I want that something, whatever it is, and I want to try to make it work_.

Or, well, he could say, _Fuck you, Stevie, for asking me that question_. It’s what he should say.

Stevens probably wants Kelly to agree, though, wants him to say that he’s right, that it really would have messed everything up. It’s the easy way out. For both of them. “I guess,” Kelly says.

“Yeah,” Stevens says after a moment.

“Yeah,” Kelly echoes.

And that’s it? They’ll forget this ever happened? Well, nothing actually happened, so they’ll move on with their lives. Fine. That’s fine. So maybe Stevens thought that he wanted to kiss him for like two seconds and now he’s glad that he didn’t. That’s fine, too.

“I’m going back to sleep,” Kelly says. He so doesn’t want to deal with this right now. He doesn’t want to deal with this _ever_.

“Okay,” Stevens says.

Kelly huffs because none of this is okay and he doesn’t even know why he’s so pissed off, because Stevens really is right, isn’t he? It would have fucked everything up.

Stevens touches his forearm. “Kelly.”

“I’m sleeping,” Kelly says and keeps his eyes shut and he’s not sure if his glad or disappointed when Stevens doesn’t say anything else after that.

Stevens’ hand his still on Kelly’s arm and Kelly doesn’t push him away. Because maybe it’s not okay right now, but it will be. Kelly’s going to go back to sleep and when he wakes up again, he’ll pretend that yesterday didn’t happen. At all.

And maybe, in the course of the day, he’ll also convince himself that it’s for the best if they never speak of this again.

*

Their (extremely late) breakfast is a little awkward, but they quickly fall back into an easy rhythm. It’s really almost like yesterday didn’t exist. Almost, because when they sit on the porch swing that night, Kelly makes sure that there’s some space between them.

Kelly still doesn’t go back to sleeping on the air mattress, because he doesn’t want to make things weird, but it’s only one more night anyway.

It’s hard to tell what Stevens is thinking. He isn’t different at all, talks to Kelly like he always does, smiles like he always does, so Kelly tries his hardest to do the same.

The next day, Kelly drives Stevens to the airport and they talk in the car and they joke around and they hug before Stevens goes through security and there’s absolutely no reason for Kelly to think that things are seriously off-kilter between them.

But they are. Everything feels wrong, and Kelly has no idea how to fix it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you follow me on tumblr, you already know that this is actually only half of what I'd originally planned for this chapter. So I guess we're currently looking at seven chapters in total.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for your comments, they always make my day :)


	5. Chapter 5

“That’s not what I meant!”

Kelly stops in the middle of the hallway. He was gonna heat up some leftovers for dinner, but maybe he shouldn’t just go bursting into the kitchen right now.

“No, you’re– You’re not even trying to understand what I’m saying.”

Sounds like Flo is on the phone, and if Kelly had to guess, he’d say that Flo is most likely talking to his girlfriend. Or arguing with his girlfriend, he should say.

“Okay. Whatever. I’ll see you tomorrow.” There’s a beat, then Flo shouts, “Fine, so I won’t see you tomorrow. Suit yourself.”

There’s a clatter. Phone on counter.

Kelly peers into the kitchen then. Flo is leaning against the counter, arms crossed, hair sticking up like he just tugged his fingers through it. He looks like he’s about to hurl a plate against the wall.

“Everything okay?” Kelly asks.

Flo looks up, lips pursed. “You heard, huh?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“She’s just…” Flo glares at his phone. “She’s always like, oh, we barely ever see each other, why don’t you care about that… like, we were gone for four days, it’s not even bad, the season has barely even started yet.”

“Yeah, that’s–”

“And of course I care? Why does she think I don’t care?”

“Maybe you should ask _her_ that?” Kelly says.

“I miss being single,” Flo says.

Well, if he doesn’t stop pouting, there’s a chance that he won’t be missing being single for that much longer. Kelly just gives him a look, though. He’s done a pretty good job of pissing off nearly everyone he knows during the last couple of weeks and he doesn’t need to add Flo to that list.

“Okay,” Flo says, “maybe I don’t.”

Kelly opens the fridge to assess the situation inside. There’s some leftover chicken. Some leftover pizza. A Tupperware container with undisclosed contents. Kelly isn’t sure how long that one has been in the fridge and he’s not sure if he wants to find out either. “Are you gonna call her back?” he asks.

“No,” Flo says, picks up his phone and slinks out of the kitchen. “Yes.”

Kelly’s own phone has been quiet all day. Well, the Aces’ group chat has been very much alive, but Kelly texted Stevens this morning and didn’t get an answer. It wasn’t anything important, just a silly chirp about the post-game interview Stevens did last night after the Schooners beat the Panthers. Still. Even though it wasn’t important, Stevens probably had time to take a quick look at his phone.

Obviously, Kelly is being completely unreasonable. Because there are a thousand reasons why Stevens might have not had time to reply. The problem is, ever since Stevens came to visit him in Canada, ever since they nearly kissed in Kelly’s parents’ kitchen, things have been weird.

Not noticeably, but there’s all those little things that suddenly feel strange to Kelly. There’s a chance that he’s just imagining all that, of course, that he’s so worried that they somehow ruined their friendship and that they can never go back to the way things were before that he’s actually ruining everything by overthinking each and every one of their interactions. Anyway, he’s pretty sure that he’s not imagining that they don’t talk as much as they used to. Maybe that’s just because it’s the beginning of the season and they’re both busy, but it gnaws at Kelly.

Stevens is coming to Vegas with the Schooners at the end of October – on his birthday actually – and they won’t see each other, because the Aces are on the road right before that game. Maybe they can meet up afterwards, but Kelly isn’t counting on it.

This is exactly why it’s a good thing that they didn’t kiss. It would have made everything even more complicated. They never even see each other. That’s no foundation for an actual relationship, right? Not that Kelly would know anything about relationships, but it would probably kill him if he knew that he could be kissing Stevens if only they were in the same city. It’s better this way.

Really. It is.

Kelly heats up some chicken and pretends that he can’t hear Flo arguing with his girlfriend on the phone over in the living room. He takes his food back to his room and watches reruns of Project Runway, his phone next to him, occasionally lighting up with a notification, but never with a text from Stevens.

Or at least not until Kelly has almost fallen asleep.

 _Sorry I forgot to charge my phone last night and it died on me halfway during the day_ , Stevens says. And that’s it.

 _its fine_ , Kelly says, even though he spent half the day agonizing about Stevens not replying to him. He adds a, _hows it going_.

_I’m okay. How are things in Vegas?_

Things in Vegas are… not bad. Not great either. Kelly feels weirdly disconnected from everyone and everything. At least he’s still good at playing hockey, but he’s not even sure if all the goals in the world would make him feel less sad.

They send a few completely meaningless texts back and forth, then Kelly sets his alarm for the next morning and gets ready for bed.

It takes him forever to fall asleep these days. He thinks about Stevens. He thinks about waking up with his face pressed into Stevens’ shirt back in his childhood bedroom. He thinks about Stevens’ fingers intertwined with his, he thinks about that moment in the kitchen, thinks about the smile on Stevens’ face, thinks about how close they were. And then he wonders what that kiss would have felt like.

Sometimes he thinks it might have been a soft one. Sometimes he thinks Stevens might have pushed him against the counter and kissed him breathless, hands in his hair, or at his hips, pulling him as close as he can. He would have been okay with both. He wants both, but he’ll get neither and it’s killing him.

*

It’s October 29th, and Kelly hasn’t been this excited to skate out onto the ice for warm-ups in a really long time. He called Stevens this morning to wish him a happy birthday, he posted one of the oldest pictures of Stevens he could find on Instagram and they started chirping each other in the comments, with Sunny and Jeff and some of Stevens’ teammates butting in as well.

And just for a couple of hours everything was exactly the way it was before the summer.

So the first thing Kelly does when he’s on the ice is to look for Stevens. He’s standing right next to the center line and Kelly can tell by his grin that he can already see him coming. Kelly doesn’t slow down, he just slams right into him and Stevens lifts him off his feet.

“Happy birthday, Stevie,” Kelly shouts.

Sandy skates up to them and gives Kelly a tap with his stick. “Careful there, Keller. Don’t injure our birthday boy.”

“Nah, he’d never,” Stevens says and puts Kelly down. “Thanks, Kells.”

Sandy grins at Kelly. “Tell your goalie that Stevie wants a birthday goal. So maybe he could just… close his eyes for a couple of seconds.”

“ _Two_ birthday goals would be nice, too,” Stevens says.

“Okay, let’s just make it three,” Sandy says.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Kelly says. “But I’ll score and dedicate that goal to you, how about that?”

Stevens laughs and pats Kelly’s head. “We’ll see about that.”

“Are you leaving right after the game?” Kelly asks. He’s been carrying Stevens’ birthday present around with him all day and he just wants to give it to Stevens real quick. There has to be time for that.

“Probably.”

“He’ll have time for a quick chat,” Sandy says. “It’s his birthday.”

“Well, see ya on the flipside, I guess,” Kelly says, gently punches Stevens’ upper arm and skates away to join the rest of the Aces.

Stevens doesn’t end up scoring, but he gets an assist. Kelly scores, though, late in the second period and he just can’t help himself, he grins at Stevens, who’s sitting on the Schooners’ bench, shaking his head.

“What’s up with you making eyes at Stevens?” Bennie asks when Kelly sits down next to him.

“I said I’d score a birthday goal for him,” Kelly tells him and tries not to read too much into the _making eyes at Stevens_ comment.

Next to him, Jeff bursts out laughing. “Not sure if he actually appreciates that birthday present.”

“I also got him a book in case he doesn’t like this one.”

“A book?”

“It’s signed.”

Bennie shakes his head. “A _book_.”

“He likes books,” Kelly says defensively. Apparently there’s two versions of that book, and Kelly found a signed edition of the one Stevens doesn’t have yet.

“I bet he’ll like it,” Jeff says.

Kelly _knows_ that Stevens will like it. Honestly, he’s not an amateur; he’s never given anyone a bad present in his entire life.

The game goes on and Kent sneaks one past the Schooners’ goalie thirty seconds before the buzzer sounds for the end of the second, but the Schooners manage to tie the game in the third. They go into overtime and they lose and Kelly isn’t even on the ice when it happens, but he still feels terrible about it. The season has barely started and only a couple of their games went into overtime, but they still lost all of the ones that did.

They aren’t off to a great start this season.

Kelly is put on media duty because he scored and of course they also ask him about that hug before the game. It’s not really a secret that he and Stevens are still friends, but Kelly doesn’t say a word about the birthday goal.

As soon as he’s done talking to the media and showered and dressed, he gets the bag with Stevens’ present and sneaks off to the visitors’ locker room. He finds someone with the Schooners logo on their jacket and asks him to please tell Ezra Stevens that Kelly is waiting for him. He stays in the hallway and tries to look like he belongs here and isn’t in enemy territory, although the Schooners also know that Kelly and Stevens are friends.

The door opens and Danny Oakes peers outside. He was drafted by Seattle ages ago – maybe it’s been fifteen or sixteen years. Kelly isn’t a hundred percent sure, he doesn’t know all that much about him, but he does know that Oakes is one of the guys who came out right after Zimmermann did.

“He’ll be out in a minute,” Oakes says. “Good game, kid.”

“Thanks, you too.”

Oakes grins. “Sucks that our schedules were so messy this time, huh? I was gonna catch up with Swoops…” He shrugs. “Next time, eh? Tell him I said hi.”

“Yeah, sure,” Kelly says. “How do you–”

“Hey,” Stevens says as he slips out the door. “Oaksy, are you bugging Kells?”

“Nah, I was just keeping the kid company, because you had to make sure your hair looks nice,” Oakes says and gives Kelly a pat on the back before he goes back into the locker room.

Stevens sighs and tugs his fingers through his hair. Kelly is pretty sure that he did nothing at all with it. It’s still damp, but some of the curls are sticking up now.

“Hi,” Kelly says.

Stevens smiles and his eyes crinkle. Kelly didn’t think about it earlier on the ice, but today is the first time they’re seeing each other ever since he took Stevens to the airport. It’s been _months_. And, sure, Kelly already gave Stevens a hug on the ice, but he gives him another one anyway. Stevens lets out a surprised huff.

“It’s been a hundred years,” Kelly says. He almost adds, _And I missed you_. Almost.

“I know,” Stevens says and gives him a squeeze.

And Kelly just really can’t let go. He’s gonna need Stevens to let go of him first, because he can’t do it. He’s gonna stand here and hug Stevens forever if he lets him. “Did you like your birthday goal?”

Stevens laughs and lets go. “I wish you’d score more against other teams and less against us.”

“You still won,” Kelly says.

“Yeah, we so did.”

“The only reason I’m not taking offence at your unbearable smugness is because it’s your birthday.” Kelly hands over the bag. “Here, I got you something. Open it later or whatever.”

“Why later? Did you get me dick-shaped pasta again?”

Kelly grins. “You’ll see.”

“Thanks, Kells,” Stevens says. “Even if it’s weird pasta.”

“Don’t you mean _especially_ if it’s weird pasta?”

Stevens rolls his eyes.

“Anyway…” Kelly says. He looks up at Stevens and for a second he’s back in his parents’ kitchen. And obviously Kelly can’t just kiss Stevens in this hallway with tons of people milling about. He can’t kiss Stevens in general, not if they were the only people in a five-mile radius, because they agreed that it would have fucked everything up anyway. Or, well, that’s what Stevens thought. And Kelly had to admit that he had a point, as much as he hates it.

Nothing’s changed about that.

“I should go soon,” Stevens says and snaps Kelly out of it. His teammates have started filing out of the visitors’ locker room. Some of them nod at Kelly, and Sandy and Oakes wave as they walk past them. “We’re flying back to Seattle in a bit.”

“Right, yeah. Let’s hang out next time, okay?”

“Okay,” Stevens says. “I guess I’ll see you in December, then?”

Yes, they’ll see each other on December 3rd. Kelly doesn’t know their entire schedule, he just knows when they’re playing the Schooners. Which is ridiculous. At least he’s self-aware, right? “For sure.”

“Well…” Stevens takes a step back, eyes narrowing. “Got a new suit, huh?”

Kelly nods. It’s a gray one he got at the beginning of the season. Sunny sort of talked him into it, but it’s really growing on him.

“Looks nice,” Stevens says. “All right, I’ll talk to you soon, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Kelly says and also takes a step back, so he won’t get any ideas about hugging Stevens again. It’s enough now. “Have a good flight.”

“Thanks…” For a moment Stevens looks like he wants to add something, but then he just smiles tightly. “Bye, Kells.”

“Bye, Stevie.”

Kelly doesn’t watch him walk away, because he doesn’t hate himself that much, so he goes straight back to the Aces’ locker room to pick up his stuff. And Flo. Kent and Jeff are thankfully keeping him company, but other than that the locker room is empty.

“Hey, Swoops, Danny Oakes says hi,” Kelly says in passing as he picks up his bag.

“Oh, does he?” Kent says, clearly annoyed.

Jeff groans. “For fuck’s sake, will you let it go?”

“Will he let _what_ go?” Flo asks.

“Nothing, he just doesn’t like Danny,” Jeff says and shoves Kent towards the door. “See you kids tomorrow.”

Flo shoots Kelly an inquiring look, but Kelly has no idea what kind of beef Kent has with Danny Oakes and he most likely won’t find out. “Let’s go…”

When they get home, Kelly has a text from Stevens waiting for him: _Where did you find a signed edition of this?? Thank you so much, I love it!!!_

Kelly knows how to do research. He also got a big bonus last season.

And then comes another text from Stevens: _They’re all chirping me because I’m so excited haha_

Kelly puts his phone down with a sigh. At least they’re sort of back to normal, right?

*

They are _so_ not back to normal. Or at least Kelly isn’t.

He keeps going back to that conversation they had. It wasn’t even a proper conversation, to be quite honest, they just mumbled a few words back and forth way too early in the morning and somehow decided that they should forget they nearly kissed, that they should ignore it, that it wouldn’t have been worth it.

The problem is, Kelly doesn’t see himself forgetting about it any time soon. They should have talked about it, _properly_ talked, but Kelly was so pissed off and hurt because Stevens said it would have ruined everything that he didn’t want to. He didn’t even try.

So maybe he didn’t ruin what they had, but he ruined what they could have had.

Of course they would have ended up in the most horrible long-distance relationship the world has ever seen. Of course one of them might have ended up getting hurt. Of course there’s a chance that it wouldn’t work out. But they could have decided to take that risk.

Kelly could have found a smidgen of courage somewhere in himself and said that he wanted to try.

*

There are still days when Kelly is convinced that they barely talk anymore. Then the Aces go to Seattle in December and he and Stevens go out for dinner the day before the game and they talk for hours and Kelly nearly loses track of time.

They send each other Christmas presents and when Kelly gets home on Christmas Eve – Kent and Jeff invited the entire team, but especially all the guys who don’t have family in Vegas – he calls Stevens and they talk until three in the morning. Kelly falls asleep with his laptop open next to him.

 _sorry i fell asleep on u_ , Kelly texts Stevens the next morning, and, _merry christmas!!!!_

 _It’s okay, you look cute when you’re asleep_ , Stevens says.

And it’s not fair. Stevens can’t just say that it’d be a mistake for them to kiss and then call him cute. That’s not how it works, so Kelly says, _ur not allowed to say stuff like that,_ and hopes that Stevens will understand.

All Kelly gets in return is, _Sorry_. And then: _Merry Christmas to you too!_

After that, each and every one of their interactions feels weird again. It’s like Stevens is watching what he’s saying so much that he doesn’t really say anything anymore.

Their schedule isn’t helping much either. The Aces go on a long roadie on the East Coast and when they return, it’s the Schooners who are on the road. So it’s mainly just a text here and there, some pictures sent back and forth, and a ten-minute Skype call when they find the time.

It takes Kelly completely by surprise when Stevens calls him without a warning on an off-day in the middle of January. Stevens usually texts him before he calls, asks if he has time to talk, and Kelly does the same unless it’s some sort of emergency, because chances are that one of them will be busy working out or skating or napping.

Kelly is at Kent and Jeff’s place with a bunch of the guys for a movie night, but he quickly grabs his phone and leaves to take the call, the guys chirping him until he’s left the room.

“Hey, Stevie,” Kelly says when he picks up. He wanders down the hall to the kitchen, hoping that that no one will barge in on him. “What’s up?”

“Hi,” Stevens says. “Are you busy?”

“Nah, not really.”

“Are you home?”

“No,” Kelly says, because if he lied, Stevens would know. He’d somehow hear it in Kelly’s voice. And Kelly is pretty sure that Kent posted a picture of all of them on his couch on Instagram earlier.

“So you are busy.”

“I’m in Parser’s kitchen and I’m the only one here and I’m ready to listen to whatever you called to tell me,” Kelly says. “Just spill.”

“Are you sure? I mean, it’s not that important, so if you don’t–”

“Stevie, come on,” Kelly interrupts. Stevens wouldn’t have called out of the blue if it wasn’t at least a little bit important.

“I had an incredibly shitty day,” Stevens says.

“Did something happen?”

“The guys were talking about the dads’ trip earlier, it’s in a couple of weeks, and… I don’t know, I mean, my dad’s coming, but I sort of starting thinking.”

“About what?”

“About what it’d be like if my real dad was there.”

“Oh,” Kelly says. He’s met Stevens’ stepdad, of course, and Stevens has a pretty good relationship with him. Stevens doesn’t talk about his actual dad a lot; Kelly just knows that he died when Stevens was two. And Kelly just doesn’t know what it feels like, he has no idea, and he can’t think of anything to say. If he was there, he’d hug Stevens, but that’s obviously not an option.

“I miss him sometimes,” Stevens says. “Which is weird, because I can’t even remember him.”

“No, but… I get it. Well, I don’t, but I can imagine that you’d want him to be there. Because it’d be nice and… yeah. I bet he’d be really proud of you.”

Stevens doesn’t say anything for a moment. “I asked my mom about him once and she said he didn’t even like hockey.”

“He’d like it now.”

“It’s not…” Stevens takes a deep breath. “I have a dad. Frank is my dad, even though he wasn’t there when I was born. So I shouldn’t even… I feel like I’m really ungrateful.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m really lucky, though. I have a great family, I mean, a lot of people don’t have that. And I have tons of friends, I don’t have to worry about money, I get to play hockey like I always wanted…”

“That doesn’t mean that you’re never allowed to be sad.” Kelly picks at the lid of an empty pizza carton. “Remember when we watched that movie where the dog died and I cried and you said it’s okay and I said it’s ridiculous and you said it’s still okay?”

“Yeah.”

“And this isn’t even something ridiculous, like crying about a movie, this… this really fucking sucks, Stevie. It’s okay if you’re sad.”

“Thanks, Kells.”

“I really wish I could hug you right now.”

“Yeah, me too,” Stevens says and now Kelly wants to hug him even more.

“Do you want me to fly to Seattle?”

“You would, wouldn’t you?”

“I guess I’d figure something out, because I sort of have to play against the Flames tomorrow, but if you really want that hug, I’ll hop on a plane real quick.”

“You can hug me when you come back to Seattle next week.”

“I will,” Kelly says. “I’ll set a reminder on my phone.”

Stevens laughs softly and Kelly is, right now, much like yesterday, and the day before that, and last month, and a year ago, so in love with him that it hurts. “I’ll let you get back to the guys,” Stevens says. “Thanks for listening.”

“I can hide in this kitchen for a bit longer if you want.”

“No, I’m fine. I promise.”

“Really?” Kelly asks. Stevens is a really good liar, but Kelly is pretty sure that a five-minute phone call doesn’t miraculously fix everything.

“Mostly fine. Better than before.”

“If you wanna talk again later when I’m home…” Kelly trails off, because if Stevens is done talking about this, it’s fine. He doesn’t want to be pushy, because Stevens _hates_ it when people try to push him to talk. Still, he has a feeling that Stevens isn’t actually done talking about this and that he’s just being polite because he knows that Kelly is hanging out with the team. “Listen, I’ll text you when I’m home and if you wanna talk again, you can call me, all right?”

“Thanks, but I’m–”

“No, I’m just saying. Because maybe you feel better now, but then in an hour our something you’ll feel worse again. Like, I hope you won’t, but if you do… I’m around.”

“Okay,” Stevens says. “I– Uh, have fun with the guys. Bye, Kells.”

“Bye, Stevie.”

Kelly hangs up and goes back to the living room. His spot on the couch has been taken over, but Kent scoots over so Kelly can sit next to him.

“Everything okay?” Kent asks lowly.

“Yeah,” Kelly says.

“Good,” Kent says and picks up Kit to set her down on Kelly’s lap.

Kelly scratches her behind the ears and wonders, not for the first time, if he should adopt a cat.

*

Kelly has to talk to someone. They’re in Edmonton right now and in a couple of days they’ll be in Seattle and Kelly feels like he’s about to explode because he’s thinking about too many things and worrying about too many things and feeling to many things.

He just needs to tell someone. Not the whole story, obviously, but he needs to get some of this out.

He’s sort of playing with the thought of telling Flo, but Kelly only just hit him with the _by the way, I’m gay_ talk at the beginning of the season and while it wasn’t much of an issue and mostly just a lot of gaping and stammering, Kelly isn’t sure if Flo is the right person to talk to about his boy problems. Because, in all honesty, Flo might be in a relationship, but he’s fucking hopeless. Flo and his girlfriend have already broken up twice, and Kelly can already see the third break-up looming on the horizon.

Kelly’s other two choices are Kent and Jeff. And it’s not that Kelly doesn’t trust Kent or anything, he’s not even sure why, but it’s Jeff that Kelly eventually texts and asks if he has a couple of minutes to talk. He knows that Kent is taking the rookies out for dinner, so when Jeff tells him to come over to his room, Kelly quickly leaves while Flo is napping.

“How bad is it?” Jeff asks when he opens the door.

“What?”

“I don’t know, the guys usually talk to Kent, so I’m kinda asking myself what exactly it is that you don’t wanna talk to Kent about.”

“No, it’s just… not about hockey,” Kelly says. If it was about hockey, Kelly would definitely be talking to Kent. Not that Jeff isn’t a great player, but Kent is… well, he’s Kent Parson. Enough said.

“Did you kill someone and want me to help you bury the body?”

“Nope.”

“I guess you can come in then,” Jeff says and ushers Kelly inside. “Go on, sit down. What’s wrong?”

Kelly sits down on what he assumes is Jeff’s bed and pulls his legs up against his chest. “This is, like… really personal.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t tell anyone?”

Jeff sits down next to him. “Sure, not a word.”

Kelly nods. He’s never really talked about boys with anyone. The guys he hooked up with before he was drafted were his secret, they still are, and everything that happened ever since he joined the Aces isn’t even worth mentioning. “So there’s this guy…”

“Yeah?”

“I kinda like him,” Kelly says. It’s probably not the best idea to start this with half-truths. “I _really_ like him.”

“And… is there a chance he might like you, too?”

“Yeah, I don’t really know, that’s the problem. Because sometimes I think he does, because we nearly kissed, you know? But now everything’s really weird and we never really talked about it and I can’t stop thinking about him. Like, I think about him all the time and it’s really starting to piss me off.”

Jeff frowns. “You _nearly_ kissed…”

“Yeah, and then he sort of said that it wouldn’t work out between us anyway. And he has a point, he totally does, but I’m thinking… we could at least try to make it work? But I guess he doesn’t want to and if he doesn’t want to, there’s nothing I can do about it, but it just sucks, because I miss him and I…” Kelly shrugs. He’s not really sure where he was going with this anymore. “Actually, I just don’t wanna be in love with him anymore, I want it all to go away and move on with my life.”

“Listen, kiddo,” Jeff says and bumps his shoulder against Kelly’s, “it doesn’t work like that.”

“I know,” Kelly says.

“Why did he say it wouldn’t work?”

“He didn’t say why.” Kelly bites his lip. “And it wasn’t just his fault, I think he might have wanted to talk about it, but I was kinda… being a dick.”

“Okay, I guess this is where I ask you if want to hear what I think you should do.”

“Let me guess, you think I should talk to him?”

Jeff shrugs. “Might help you figure things out.”

It’s not like Kelly wasn’t already considering showing up at Stevens’ place and saying something like, _Hey, we should really talk about what happened last summer, you know, when we nearly kissed?_ It just kinda scares the shit out of him.

“It’s not easy,” Jeff says. “I know that it isn’t.”

“Yeah,” Kelly says. “And he’s such a great guy and maybe I’m not good enough for him anyway. I don’t know, I feel really…” _Lonely_. “Who knows, I’m feeling a lot of things. I’m really sorry that I’m annoying you with this. I should go back to my room, I’m sorry.”

“No, hey…” Jeff puts an arm around him. “We’re a team, right? Even off the ice.”

Kelly sighs. “Thanks, Swoops.”

“Talk to your boy, okay?”

“Okay,” Kelly says. And it’s all he says, because he doesn’t want the next words out of his mouth to be, _It’s Stevens, I’m in love with Stevens, and it’s making everything five times more complicated_. Jeff doesn’t even know that Stevens isn’t straight. And that’s definitely not Kelly’s secret to share.

“Look, sometimes things just don’t work out between two people,” Jeff says. “It happens and it’s hard to come to terms with that, but sometimes saying it wouldn’t work is actually just the easy way out.”

Is that what they’re doing? Are they just picking the easy way out because they’re too scared to try? “Do you think you and Kent would be together if one of you was on a different team?” Kelly asks.

“Honestly? I have no idea. But if one of us got traded, we’d make it work somehow.”

Kelly has no idea how Jeff manages to sound so sure about that.

Anyway, he’s going to talk to Stevens. Really. He just hates that it feels like the hardest goddamned thing in the world.

*

Kelly is invited to Stevens’ place for dinner the evening before the Aces play the Schooners in Seattle. They hug when Stevens opens the door like Kelly promised, and they talk about their parents and their teammates and the Aces’ roadie and the Schooners’ charity night, and they eat dinner, and Kelly helps Stevens with the dishes, and Kelly can’t convince himself to bring it up.

Because they’re fine. They’re joking around and it’s so easy to be around Stevens and it feels like they’re best friends again, without anything else getting in the way.

Kelly is starting to think that maybe this mess somehow fixed itself. At least until they sit down on Stevens’ couch and Kelly leaves a couple of inches between them, because he can’t sit right next to Stevens right now. Honestly, he can’t. He’s actually glad that he didn’t come over to Stevens’ place the last time the Aces were in Seattle, but this time Stevens insisted on cooking dinner.

So here Kelly is, trying to pretend that everything is perfectly okay, when, in fact, nothing at all is okay.

And Stevens notices. How could he not? He knows Kelly better than pretty much anyone else in the whole world. “Kells…”

Kelly gives him a look, begging him not to ask. “What?”

“Pick a movie,” Stevens says after a moment and hands over the remote. They both know that Stevens wanted to say something else. They had a chance to talk and they both looked at it and watched it go by.

Kelly realizes then, that from now on it’ll always be like this. If they never talk, they’ll never leave behind this lingering awkwardness, and they won’t leave behind all the things that went unsaid between them either. In between it might seem like everything is fine, but they’ll keep coming back to moments like this one.

Kelly puts down the remote and looks over at Stevens who’s watching him, brows knit together. Kelly knows that it’s time. They somehow made it through half a year without talking about this, but Kelly can’t ignore this any longer. “Stevie, I–”

“I’m sorry,” Stevens says.

Okay, Kelly really wasn’t expecting that.

Stevens makes a face. “I fucked things up between us and I’m really, really sorry.”

Kelly shakes his head. This is all wrong. “You didn’t.”

“Yeah, I did. Because I… We almost…”

“Yeah.” They almost kissed and then everything went to shit, but that wasn’t Stevens’ fault. “I was there, too. It was both of us. And then we fucked it up even more because we never talked about it.”

“No offense, but I didn’t get the impression that you wanted to talk.”

“Well, I didn’t get the impression that you cared all that much, so–”

“What the fuck, Kells? Of course I cared. I care.”

“Then why did you say that it would have been really horrible anyway?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You said something like that,” Kelly says. He knows that his voice is steadily getting louder and he couldn’t give less of a shit. “You said it would have screwed everything up. And what was I supposed to say then? Because you’d already decided that it would have been a mistake.”

“That’s not… No.”

Kelly folds his arms across his chest. “That’s a really fucking great contribution to this conversation.”

Stevens almost looks guilty now. Maybe a little hurt. And that’s so not what Kelly wanted, because they’re both to blame here. He doesn’t want to fight about this, so maybe he should try a different approach.

Kelly takes a deep breath. “Did you really want to?”

“Huh?”

“Did you really want to kiss me?”

Stevens blinks at him, clearly taken aback by the question, but Kelly needs to hear Stevens say it even though he thinks he already knows the answer. Stevens tugs his sleeves over his hands. “Yeah, I did.”

Well, since they’re telling the truth… “I would have kissed you back,” Kelly says.

Kelly is pretty sure that about a year goes by before Stevens says, “We live a million miles apart.”

“I know.”

“We barely ever see each other.”

“I _know_.”

“It wouldn’t work out.”

“I get that, Stevie. You’re making that pretty clear. I’m just saying… I would have kissed you back.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Stevens says, and he sounds so sad, and he looks so defeated, that Kelly just wants to hug him.

But it also kinda pisses Kelly off that Stevens is playing the _it wouldn’t work out_ game again. “It might work out,” Kelly says, sullen. “Have you ever thought about that?”

“I think about that all the time.”

Kelly leans closer to Stevens. “You do?”

Stevens reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind Kelly’s ear. Growing it out was the best and the worst idea Kelly has ever had. “I’m so sorry, Kells, but I can’t do this.”

“Seriously, fuck that.” Kelly shoves Stevens’ hand away. “What do you want, Stevie? Just tell me, it’s fine, whatever it is, because I can’t go another couple of months without knowing what the hell you’re thinking.”

“I can’t do the long-distance thing,” Stevens says.

“You don’t even wanna try?”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Stevens says. Kelly can tell that he’s choosing his words very, very carefully. “I’m really scared of losing you. You’re so important to me, Kells, you have no idea.”

“I think I might have _some_ idea,” Kelly says, indignant.

Stevens sighs.

“You’re not gonna lose me,” Kelly goes on. “Ever.”

Stevens doesn’t reply and he doesn’t have to. Kelly can see that he’s scared. There’s nothing he can say here. Now is not a good time for nagging, because Stevens isn’t sure about this and Kelly won’t be the one to talk him into something he doesn’t really want.

Kelly picks up the remote. “Let’s watch a movie, all right?”

“Fine, let’s watch a movie.” Stevens nudges Kelly’s arm. “Are we okay?”

“We’re always okay,” Kelly says quietly, and leans against Stevens.

He feels like he’s lying again, only this time he isn’t sure why. Kelly could never hate Stevens for not wanting this, because part of him understands. The other part of him is angry at the universe for keeping them apart. If Stevens was still in Vegas– Well, there’s no point in even thinking about it. Stevens is here, in Seattle, and he’s not coming back.

So they watch a movie and Kelly curls against Stevens like he always does. He knows now. He knows that they’ll never be more than this. And maybe one day he’ll be okay with it, because he doesn’t have much of a choice anyway.

At least now he can stop lying awake at night wondering about all those what ifs.

*

“…and promise you’ll let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks, mom,” Kelly says. He doesn’t miss how his voice is trembling again and his mom sure as hell isn’t missing it either. “I will.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Can you maybe tell everyone that I’ll be fine, though?” Kelly honestly doesn’t have it in himself to get back to every single person who called him earlier. He instantly burst into tears when his mom asked him if he was okay and he can’t do that another four or five times.

He can’t even leave his room, because he’s scared that he’ll run into Flo in the kitchen. When Kelly got home earlier, Flo looked at him with those sad, worried eyes and Kelly can’t deal with that right now.

“Sure, sweetie. I’ll call again tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Kelly mumbles, and says goodbye, and hangs up. He has no missed call from Stevens, but he did send Kelly three texts.

_Are you okay?_

_You didn’t come back out for the third, so I’m guessing something’s wrong._

_Call me when you have time?_

Kelly breathes in, and out, and dials Stevens’ number. They’ve been talking a lot, but they’re both very careful not to mention the conversation they had in Seattle. Kelly is pretty much pretending that he doesn’t have any feelings for Stevens whatsoever and is hoping that someday soon it’ll actually be true. It’s just plain denial. It sort of works.

Even though it’s late and Kelly is fully expecting Stevens to be fast asleep, Stevens answers after one ring. Seriously, it doesn’t sound like Stevens was sleeping at all. “Hey, what happened? Everything okay?”

Okay. So. Kelly is not gonna cry again. He’s a hockey player; he knows that injuries happen. He’s missed games before, and although he never missed quite that many, he needs to get a grip. This isn’t the end of the world.

“Is it bad?” Stevens asks.

“I broke my hand.”

“Shit, Kells. Are you– How long’s it gonna take?”

“Weeks,” Kelly says. He chews on his bottom lip. _No crying_. “Most likely won’t come back before the end of the regular season.”

“But you’ll be back for the first round of playoffs?”

“Probably.”

“See, that’s something. And it’s looking good for you guys, I bet you’ll get a spot.”

“Yeah, it’s just…” Kelly sniffles. He’s not crying, nope. He wipes at his eyes. “I was…” He was doing really well, he even was on a point streak, and now he has to sit out the rest of the regular season. It wasn’t even anyone’s fault. He tried to block a shot and it hit his hand.

“I know, I didn’t mean… Of course it sucks.”

“No, you’re right, it could be worse,” Kelly says. “I’m lucky that I didn’t need surgery. And I guess you’re lucky too, because I was gonna fight you next week.”

Stevens laughs. “Maybe you should try fighting someone your own size.”

“Fuck you, you’re just a couple of inches taller than me. Anyway, it’s not like I can fight anyone with this stupid cast on.” Kelly kicks at the sweater that’s bundled up at the end of his bed and it doesn’t make him feel better in the slightest.

“You’ll be fine, Kells. And you’ll still be a great player. Missing a bunch of games won’t change anything about that.”

“I know,” Kelly says. It’s still nice to hear, though. “Anyway, it’s late, you should go to sleep, you have a game tomorrow.”

“Okay. If you need anything, just call. Even if it’s four in the morning.”

“Thanks, Stevie. Goodnight.”

“Night, Kells.”

Kelly hangs up and curls up on his side. He probably won’t be able to sleep, there’s too much going on in his head right now, but he also doesn’t want to watch TV or anything. He’s just gonna lie here and hate the entire world and also himself until he falls asleep.

A minute or two later, there’s a tentative knock on his door.

Kelly doesn’t answer, even though Flo must have heard that he was on the phone and knows that Kelly isn’t actually asleep yet.

“I found a bag of Reese’s Pieces and I thought you might want them, I’m just gonna leave them out here. And I, uh… I’ll be in my room. You know, if you… Yeah.” Flo doesn’t wait for a reply. Kelly can hear his footsteps retreat a mere moment later.

Kelly eventually convinces himself to get up, picks up the bag of Reese’s Pieces outside his door and sullenly eats half the bag. All he can do is hope that he’ll get back out on the ice quickly. And that the guys will manage to get the Aces to the playoffs.

*

They do clinch a playoff spot. And Kelly is back for the first game, and he’s ready. Honestly, he’s never been this ready for anything in his entire life.

The Aces still lose game seven, though, so the first round is the only one they get to play in.

The Schooners don’t fare much better. After they get a wild card spot, they don’t make it further than the second round. Kelly flies to Seattle to watch the third and the fourth game, and the Schooners lose one and win the other, but they ultimately lose the series after six games.

Kelly sends Stevens a string of sad faces and tells him to call if he wants to talk.

The next day, they do talk. About hockey. About how much it sucks that the Schooners didn’t make it. About the draft. They don’t talk about whether or not they’ll see each other during the summer. Kelly suspects that after what happened last year, it might be better if they didn’t.

*

A couple of days before the draft, Kelly’s phone starts ringing and after one glance at the caller ID, part of him already knows what’s about to happen. He knows what he’ll be told when he answers that call.

He played his last game with the Aces without even knowing it and next season, home will be somewhere else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book Kelly gets for Stevens is Good Omens in case anyone is wondering. (I too am still looking for the black edition of that book. I don't even care if it's signed.)
> 
> Thank you so much for your comments, you guys!! I'm so glad y'all enjoy reading this fic as much as I enjoy writing it :)


	6. Chapter 6

It’s been raining all day and it almost feels like the universe is trying to remind Kelly that he’s not in Vegas anymore.

It’s starting to get dark, but Kelly is too lazy to reach over and turn on the lamp next to his couch. He’s playing his first pre-season game with a team that is not the Las Vegas Aces in two days and even though he’s gone through training camp and countless practice sessions with all those new guys, Kelly’s brain is somehow still convinced that he’ll be taking the ice with the Aces.

Kelly’s phone, sitting on the coffee table, chimes with an incoming text. He doesn’t check it.

If he could stay on this couch forever, he would. It was all too much. Being told that he’d been traded to the Falconers, Kent calling him afterwards, saying that he knows they would have liked to keep him, that he’d be calling Jack Zimmermann – “I’ll tell him to look out for you and Swoops said he’d call Hawkins. You’ll be fine with those guys” – and then moving to Providence, packing up everything he owns, sorting out the lease for the condo with Flo, finding a new apartment, meeting all those people he used to play against that are now his teammates.

It was overwhelming. Jack helped him find an apartment, introduced him to the team, invited him over for dinner together with the other new additions to the team and they met Jack’s husband and his kid, and it was nice, and Kelly went home with the best apple pie he’d ever had, but even after all that Providence still doesn’t feel like home.

Kelly isn’t sure if he just doesn’t remember it that well, but he’s somehow convinced that finding his place in Vegas was much easier, or maybe that’s just because he and Stevens immediately hit it off and Kelly had a best friend right from the start. It definitely made things easier, having someone around who was also new, but more experienced in some ways. Kelly doesn’t have someone like that in Providence.

He’s on his own, even though he knows that Jack wouldn’t mind if he called. Jeff’s childhood friend, and now Kelly’s line mate, Freddie Hawkins, has been over a couple of times, brought him a plant that Kelly is keeping alive through sheer force of will and some water every now and then, and Kelly appreciates it, but he has a feeling that Hawk wouldn’t have done all that if Jeff hadn’t asked him to keep an eye on Kelly.

Maybe he should have tried to find a roommate. Instead, he convinced himself that after four years of living with someone else, it was time that he tried to do this on his own. His apartment in Providence is smaller than the one he shared with Flo in Vegas. It has a spare room that he could maybe turn into a proper guest room, but right now there’s only a pull-out couch, a desk that Kelly never uses, a half-empty shelf, and four boxes that Kelly still hasn’t managed to unpack.

Every time he gets up to do it, he thinks about how he might not be here for very long anyway. There’s no way of telling, is there? Getting traded to Providence took him completely by surprise. Of course Kelly was always a little on edge when the trade deadline rolled around, but he had a good season, despite his injury. He did well in all of their playoff games. But it wasn’t enough, they didn’t work as well as they should have as a team, and so the Aces decided to make some changes. They got a player and a draft pick in exchange for Kelly; it was a good deal for the Aces and apparently they tried to convince the Falcs to go for a different player, but they wanted Kelly.

And now he’s not really sure about anything anymore. Who knows how he’ll be doing with the Falcs? During practice, he’s been playing on a line with Hawkins and Lundgren. Hawk has been with the Falcs for years, Lundy got drafted by them three years ago, and Kelly actually fits right in, but they haven’t played an actual game together and Kelly is about as worried as he is excited.

Kelly sighs and rolls onto his side, reaching for his phone. The text he got is from his sister; it’s a picture of his niece’s birthday party. Kelly replies with as much enthusiasm he can muster, then he pulls up the conversation he had with Stevens a couple of days ago. It was just a _How’s it going in Seattle?_ and _How’s it going in Providence?_ sort of conversation, nothing of substance. They both said something along the lines of, _Fine, I can’t wait for the season to start_ , and that was it.

Stevens and his mom came to Providence to visit Kelly right after he signed the lease for his new apartment during the summer before Stevens went back to Seattle. Stevens didn’t come to Ontario and Kelly didn’t go to Massachusetts, but when they met up in Providence, Kelly quickly realized that it didn’t matter if they spent two days or a week together.

Stevens’ mom spent an afternoon with a friend from college and Kelly and Stevens ended up in the kitchen, unpacking the _Kitchen Stuff_ box. There wasn’t much in that box, just a bunch of mugs and Kelly’s favorite cereal bowl, a couple of pots and pans, a ladle that looks like a dinosaur, some cutlery and two plates – “So your kitchen cabinets won’t be totally empty,” Flo said.

“You’re gonna have to buy so much stuff,” Stevens said, shaking his head at the cabinet that had nothing but Kelly’s lone cereal bowl in it.

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to leave Flo with an empty kitchen, you know? You didn’t take anything to Seattle either. Except for your nerdy mug.”

“You gave me that mug.”

“Yeah, because I know what kind of nerdy shit you like.”

Stevens shrugged, and grinned, and leaned back against the counter. “Yeah, I guess you do.”

Kelly grinned back at him and he sort of got caught up in that moment. Another kitchen, barely any space between them, and Stevens was looking at him like that again, like he wanted to lean over and kiss Kelly and to hell with the consequences. And Kelly wanted him to, even though he knew that Stevens wouldn’t.

All that Stevens did in the end was to nudge Kelly’s arm.

And Kelly nudged him back and Stevens gave him one of those awkward half-hugs in return. Then Kelly gave him a proper hug. It wasn’t fair of him, because he knew how Stevens felt, and he was just making things worse for both of them, but he also knew Stevens wouldn’t push him away and he missed hugging Stevens.

“I’m sorry,” Kelly mumbled into Stevens’ shirt.

“It’s okay,” Stevens said quietly and hugged him a little tighter. Maybe Stevens missed hugging him too.

Kelly doesn’t remember how long they stood there, Stevens leaning against the counter, Kelly leaning against Stevens, arms wrapped around his waist, just holding on. It was all out in the open anyway, it didn’t matter if Stevens saw just how much Kelly wanted to be close to him. It might have been five minutes they stood there, it might have been half an hour. For a little while, Kelly felt like they lived in a different universe where they could have this, where distance didn’t matter and they were both a little braver.

Eventually, Kelly said, “I’m gonna let go in a minute.”

And then he let go. And they drove to IKEA to get more plates. And Stevens bought him a stuffed toy broccoli. And then they went out for dinner with Stevens’ mom and the next day the two of them drove back to Massachusetts and Stevens’ mom told Kelly that he was welcome to visit them anytime, even during the season. “Frank and I will definitely come and watch a game,” Stevens’ mom said. Kelly promised he’d get them tickets.

Honestly, Kelly won’t go to Massachusetts to visit Stevens’ parents, but it’ll be nice to see a few familiar faces at a game. Half of Kelly’s family is coming to Providence to watch his first regular season game with the Falcs as well and he really can’t wait to see them all.

Kelly is starting to realize that he’s really wasn’t made for living on his own.

He likes having people around. Even when he wasn’t hanging out with Flo, he still heard him wander about, heard the beeping of his microwave, heard him cursing at video games, heard him talk on the phone. Sometimes he stayed over at his girlfriend’s place, but most of the time he was still around. Kelly’s new apartment is way too quiet. If he’s still in Providence next season, he’ll tell Jack that one of the rookies can live in his spare room.

Kelly thumbs through his contacts, wondering if he should text Lundy and ask him if he wants to come over for a movie night. Or he could just ask the guys in the group chat if they want to hang out. In the end, he goes back to his conversation with Stevens – _busy? or can i call u on skype?_

Stevens replies about a second later – _Sure, just call._

Kelly reaches over to finally turn on the lamp next to the couch, pulls up Skype and hits call. He doesn’t actually have time to think about why he’s calling in the first place before Stevens answers. “Hey, Kells.” The video loads slowly and slowly goes from ridiculously grainy to moderately grainy.

“Stevie,” Kelly says, “what’s up?”

“See, I was gonna ask you the same thing,” Stevens says. He’s all scruffy and Kelly’s heart beats a little faster at the sight of him. Stevens’ playoff beard last season was actually pretty impressive. And kinda hot. Really hot. Unbearably hot.

Kelly is a complete failure beard-wise. Whatever. “Uh, nothing much.”

“No?” Stevens asks. He’s also sitting on his couch, except the sun is shining in Seattle and lighting up Stevens’ living room.

“Living alone is really weird,” Kelly says. “Like, I keep waiting for Flo to come in through the door. When you moved to Seattle, didn’t it… I don’t know, wasn’t it weird that it was just you all of a sudden?”

“Yeah. It was really quiet without you.”

Okay, maybe Kelly didn’t want to hear that.

“You get used to it,” Stevens adds. “Might take some time, but it stops being weird. Promise.”

“Maybe I should look for a roommate. I _like_ having someone around, you know? I like having someone to talk to. Now I come home and there’s… no one. Watching movies on my own isn’t as much fun either.”

“Because you can’t steal anyone’s popcorn?”

“I never stole your popcorn. You _shared_ it with me.”

“Of course I did.”

“You’re just that nice,” Kelly says. He looks out the window. Still raining. “I don’t know if I like Providence.”

“Why?”

“It’s raining.”

For some reason, Stevens bursts out laughing.

Kelly glares at him. “What’s so funny? Seriously, it’s been raining all day. I mean, I know it rains a lot in Seattle, too, so you should understand. It’s depressing.”

“Kells,” Stevens says, “remember when we first came to Vegas? And you told me that you don’t like it because there’s too much sun and your Canadian soul can’t handle it? And now you’re complaining about the rain.”

Kelly groans. Okay, maybe he likes the rain a little bit, and maybe it’s not actually the weather, or even Providence, that he doesn’t like. “I hate change.”

“I know.”

“Like, I never thought I’d say this, but I miss Vegas.”

“I know.”

“I miss the guys.”

Stevens only sighs.

“You really _do_ know, don’t you?” Kelly says. Stevens has done this before, has packed up all of his belongings, moved to Seattle, moved into a new apartment, and has been living on his own ever since. “How long does it take until you stop feeling like you’re not home?”

“I don’t know. You get used to it. The guys here were great from the start, but sometimes I still…” Stevens is quiet for a moment. “The Aces were a special bunch of guys.”

“Yeah,” Kelly says. He’s not sure how the hell he’s supposed to play against his old team. Probably the same way he plays against Stevens. He’ll just have to forget that those guys are his friends. _Were_ his friends. No, they still are, but Kelly also knows that he’s part of a new team now, and that it’s time to make new friends and to allow these guys to be his new family, just like the Aces were.

“Talking to you made things easier,” Stevens says.

“It did?”

Stevens nods, his lips curling into a smile.

Maybe Kelly shouldn’t have called him on Skype, because Stevens’ smile still does things to him. And he can’t help it, he has to smile back at him, and he knows that he’s being so obvious, but it doesn’t really matter anymore. It’s a strange situation to be in, knowing that Stevens _knows_ , and knowing that it won’t change a thing.

They talk for a while, and Stevens makes dinner and takes his phone into his kitchen and shakes his head at Kelly when he admits that he didn’t eat a single vegetable all day. “I cuddled my broccoli this morning, though,” Kelly says. “You know, I think I’m gonna stick with calling him Stevie.”

“I actually hate you for naming that broccoli after me.”

“Shouldn’t have bought it for me.”

“I just thought you should have at least one vegetable in your life.”

“I have bananas. That’s something, right?”

“Do you eat them or do you just look at them?”

“Mostly I talk to them when I’m feeling lonely,” Kelly says jokingly, but in the end it’s a little too real.

And maybe Stevens sees it, or hears it in his voice somehow, because he says, “Kelly, you know that you can always call me, right? Like, even if I can’t answer, I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”

“Okay,” Kelly says. It’s all he can manage without getting choked up. “Well, I’m gonna leave you alone so you can eat all those veggies.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow when I get home.”

“You don’t have to,” Kelly says, even though he knows that he’d be looking forward to it all day.

“I know,” Stevens says. “I’ll still call you tomorrow.”

Kelly nods, and waves, and somehow grits out a, “Bye,” before he hangs up. And then it’s quiet again. Kelly turns on the TV and eventually falls asleep on the couch, wrapped into a blanket, hugging a pillow.

*

“Good game last night, kid,” Hawk says as he pulls on his practice jersey.

“Thanks,” Kelly says. He can’t even see Hawk, because his own jersey somehow got caught in his pads, or maybe it’s wonky somehow. In any case, he’s sort of stuck and he’s not really sure how to get out of this without the entire team noticing. They’ll chirp him into next week.

He’s already had clothes go missing after practice, had his bag vanish on the road and show up again but with about twice as many pairs of socks than he had before and all of his shirts gone, and had Lundy poke him with his stick during an interview. Kelly is still planning his revenge – he’s trying to figure out if it’s actually possible to wrap Lundy’s car in bubble wrap or if it might be easier to put glitter in his air conditioning vents.

Kelly wiggles a bit, but his jersey still isn’t moving.

“I got you,” Hawk says, gives Kelly’s jersey a tug and then he’s free.

“Thanks,” Kelly mutters.

“Aw, Kelly, do you need help putting on your skates, too?” Poots croons.

“I’ll tie your laces,” Lundy says.

Kelly only glares at them and makes a show of putting on his skates on his own, never taking his eyes off Poots.

“Okay, he’s starting to scare me,” Poots stage-whispers to Snowy.

Kelly narrows his eyes.

Poots slowly backs away, grinning. Once he’s out of the locker room, Kelly smirks as well. Maybe he should opt for instant payback instead of coming up with an elaborate plan. The guys file out of the locker room one by one and Kelly follows them, Jack and Hawk at his heels.

When Kelly first came to Providence, he thought Jack Zimmermann was intimidating. Actually, he thought Jack Zimmermann was intimidating long before he got traded to the Falcs, but being in the same room with him, talking to him, made Kelly so nervous that he just started babbling and Jack just smiled and nodded, until Kelly eventually said, “Sorry, I’m really nervous.”

And then Hawk showed up and shook Kelly’s hand and said, “Hi nervous, I’m Hawk,” and Jack let out the most unattractive snort and from then on Kelly didn’t find him _that_ intimidating anymore.

Jack takes hockey seriously, but he also cares about his team. He wants everyone to feel comfortable. The Falcs are a family too, but they’re a different kind of family than the Aces are. Maybe it doesn’t make much sense, but Kelly would say that hanging out with the Aces felt like hanging out with a horde of cousins, and hanging out with the Falcs feels like hanging out with his uncles.

The Falcs are easy to be around. Most of the time.

“They’ll calm down before Christmas,” Hawk says. “Or at least they did when I first got traded here.”

“Because you kept messing with their equipment,” Jack says.

“I did no such thing.” Hawk turns to Kelly and winks. “Seriously. It wasn’t me.”

“Of course it wasn’t you.” Kelly grins. “I’m not gonna unscrew the lid of Poots’ water bottle either.”

“No?”

“No, I’d never.”

“And I’d never help you and distract him while you do it,” Hawk says.

“Glad we’re on the same page,” Kelly says.

In the end, it’s Jack who manages to rope Poots into a conversation while Kelly takes care of Poots’ water bottle, with Hawk standing next to him, looking not at all innocent, but Poots doesn't notice.

Not until it's too late.

Tater later on tries to blame it on Hawk – “I’m see Hawksie look suspicious next to water bottles” – and beams at Kelly when Poots turns to glare at Hawk.

Lundy then sidles up to Kelly and gives him a nudge. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Nice one.”

Kelly only laughs.

Stevens was right. You get used to it. Kelly isn’t sure why he thought he’d feel at home in Providence right away. It just happened exceptionally quickly in Vegas, but that was because of Stevens.

There’s no Stevens in Providence, but Kelly’s making friends, he hangs out with Lundy and some of the other guys and at first he doesn’t even notice that Providence feels differently than it did when he first arrived. After a couple of weeks, he has guys inviting him over after practice, and they go out for dinner when they happen to have a day off, and Kelly slowly grows into his new life here.

*

Kelly’s parents come to Providence for an early Christmas get-together, then the Falcs go on the road for a couple of games. They’re back in town for an early game on New Year’s Eve and the entire team is invited to Jack’s place afterwards. Some of the guys who have little kids at home and want to spend the rest of the evening with their wives head home after the game, but nearly the entire team, plus a whole bunch of significant others and some of the kids end up going to Jack’s.

Jack’s husband Bitty has once again outdone himself with the food. Kelly didn’t know much about him, he actually still doesn’t, but Stevens owns the cookbook he published two years ago and swears that it’s one of the best he’s ever seen – “He just makes everything sound so easy? And it is? You can’t even do anything wrong, it’s incredible.”

Kelly has no idea what his actual job is. Apparently he runs some sort of baking blog as well and he’s also a food critic, but he’s also involved in some of Jack’s charity stuff, and Kelly honestly has no idea how he does all that.

Jack’s kid is at the party too, still wearing a tiny Falconers jersey, handing out party hats that she decorated herself. Kelly puts one on and Bitty snaps a picture of them.

Kelly’s met her before, when he was invited to Jack’s for dinner with all the new guys on the team. “It’s funny,” she said when Kelly introduced himself to her, “because your name is Kelly and my name is Allie, it’s almost the same.” At family skate, she tried to teach him how to twirl and the Falcs’ PR team plastered video footage of it all over every single one of their social media channels. Anyway, he and Allie, they get along.

Bitty told him at family skate that they adopted Allie a little over two years ago when she was four and that she wanted to play hockey at first and then saw one of Bitty’s old figure skating videos and decided to try that next.

Allie eventually falls asleep in an arm chair and Jack carries her upstairs.

Later, Kelly finds his way back to the kitchen for another slice of pie and bumps into a guy Kelly assumes is one of Bitty’s friends.

“Here for the pie, huh?”

“Yeah,” Kelly says and eyes what’s left over. It’s not much, but that’s hardly surprising.

“This one’s good if you like chocolate,” the guy says, “although I sold Bitty the apples for that one over there, so it might be even better.”

“You did?”

“I work at the farmers’ market sometimes, I’ve known Bitty for a few years. I’m Sam.”

Kelly shakes Sam’s hand. “Julian. Well, the guys call me Kelly, so call me that. Or… either one of is fine, but actually only my parents call me Julian, so maybe Kelly’s better.”

Sam grins. “Kelly, huh?”

“Last name’s Keller.”

“And I’m guessing you’re one of the hockey guys?” Sam asks, his eyes slowly wandering down Kelly’s torso before they snap back up to Kelly’s.

“Yeah,” Kelly says. He can feel his cheeks flush.

“I don’t really know anything about hockey, I’m afraid. I went skating with my little sister once and it was a total catastrophe.”

“Did you fall on your ass?”

“Yeah, I spent more time sitting on the ice than skating,” Sam says and shrugs. “We’re all good at different things, I guess.”

“What are you good at, then?”

“Lasagna, mostly.”

As it turns out, Sam’s dad owns one of the most popular restaurants in town, which Sam works at as well – he only helps his uncle out at the farmers’ market once or twice a week. And Sam’s a nice guy. He’s funny and he waves his hands around a lot when he talks and he keeps telling one story after the other and then he asks Kelly to explain hockey and they’re standing in the kitchen laughing as midnight ticks closer.

Occasionally someone will come walking into the kitchen for one of the last slices of pie, but no one really pays them any mind.

All the while, Sam keeps a respectful distance, but Kelly’s pretty sure that Sam is flirting with him. At least a little bit. Honestly, Kelly’s always been bad at telling. He’s completely hopeless. Then Sam says, “Are you here with someone, because I’d hate to hold you hostage.”

“Nah, I’m… It’s just me.”

Sam smiles at him. He has a sweet smile and it always reaches his eyes. Kelly likes this guy. He really, really does, and he hates his brain for ruining it all and reminding him of Stevens. Which is just ridiculous, because Stevens is in Seattle and currently playing against the Las Vegas Aces. Jeff sent Kelly a picture earlier, of himself and Kent and Stevens. _your bff says hi._

Kelly just can’t help himself, he checks his phone. The game’s tied, but it’s far from over.

Sam raises his eyebrows in question.

“A friend of mine is playing against my old team.”

“Does that even work? Being friends with guys on other teams?”

“Yeah, you just stop being friends for a couple of hours when you play each other.”

Sam laughs. “Man, I couldn’t do that.”

“It can be kinda weird.” Kelly’s phone lights up with an _End of 2nd Period_ notification. It’s ten minutes to midnight. “Almost midnight,” Kelly says, which is completely unnecessary, because Sam has eyes. Nice eyes.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “So, there’s a chance I’m reading this totally wrong, and I’m really sorry if I am, but…” Sam shrugs, his smile sheepish. “If you want someone to kiss at midnight with no strings attached, I’m available.”

Kelly only stares at him for a moment. He wants to. He wants to kiss this incredibly nice boy and forget about everything else, but he’s in Jack Zimmermann’s kitchen and a good two thirds of his team is milling about and nobody even knows that he’s into guys. He’s just not there yet.

“Hey,” Sam says when Kelly doesn’t reply, “it’s cool, I’ll…” He nods at the door.

“No, wait a second,” Kelly says. “It’s just… Nobody knows.”

“Oh…”

Kelly takes a deep breath. “Can we go find a quiet corner where no one will come looking for pie?”

“We sure can,” Sam says and looks around.

Kelly does as well, his eyes falling on the door of Bitty’s walk-in pantry. It’s huge. Kelly was in there earlier to get another bag of chips and he knows that two people can hang out in there without a problem. He looks at Sam, then back at the pantry. “I guess it’ll do.”

*

The Schooners go on an East Coast roadie in the middle of January and it takes them at first to New York, then to Jersey, to Boston, and finally to Providence.

Kelly’s counting the days.

He saw Stevens in November when the Falcs played in Seattle. They lost, got shut out, and moved on to Vancouver, only to lose another game. But before all that, Kelly met Stevens for dinner, this time at some new restaurant that Stevens and Sandy found.

At first Kelly thought it was a ploy to keep him away from Stevens’ apartment, and his couch, and the inevitable two hours of them sitting next to each other in the dark, but then they went to that restaurant that was all dim lights and dark furniture and they sat somewhere in the back and the food was incredible and Kelly made Stevens promise that they’d go back to that place every time Kelly came to Seattle.

“So, next season, huh?” Stevens said.

“Right,” Kelly mumbled. He’d somehow forgotten that now they were down to two games a season with them playing in different Conferences.

Back in November, January seemed like a million years away.

Stevens’ lips twitched. “Maybe we’ll see each other during playoffs.”

Kelly only shook his head at him, because obviously they’d only see each other in the final round and he wasn’t – and isn’t – sure if he wants to find out what it’s like to play against his best friend’s team in the Stanley Cup finals.

Kelly nudged Stevens’ foot under the table. “And we can hang out when I’m in Providence, right?”

“Obviously,” Stevens said and nudged Kelly back. And he didn’t pull his foot away, and Kelly didn’t either. They didn’t talk about it. They just went on pretending that everything was exactly like it had always been.

Except nothing’s like it’s always been, because now there are those lingering looks and those long pauses when they talk on Skype. Now there’s this strange tension between them.

Now Stevens is coming to Providence and he’ll be coming over to Kelly’s place and they’ll order pizza and watch a movie. Even though Kelly knows that it’s a terrible idea, he just wants to sit next to Stevens for a little while and talk while they’re watching a movie they’ve already seen a million times, like they used to back in Vegas.

Kelly puts his stuffed broccoli on the couch and Stevens pulls it against his chest the second he sits down. He’s wearing a Schooners Hockey hoodie and his hair is all over the place and Kelly sort of wants to cuddle up to him, but he orders the pizza first and makes sure that there’s at least a little space between them when he sits down.

“Hey,” Stevens says when he’s done eating. He pokes Kelly with the broccoli. “Eat some broccoli.”

“Gross,” Kelly says and snatches the broccoli away from Stevens. He nods at the TV remote. “Pick a movie.”

They end up watching Seven and neither of them is really paying attention. Stevens shows Kelly pictures of Oaksy’s new dog that he picked up at a shelter and Kelly tells Stevens about the pranks he and Lundy pulled on Poots, about the incredible birthday pie Bitty made for him last week, and about his super old neighbor who started watching hockey when Kelly told her that he’s a hockey player. He’s been thinking about getting her tickets.

It’s just idle prattling and it feels good to talk to Stevens like this, but Stevens has an arm slung around him and all of this once again seems an awful lot like something it’s not.

They should draw a line somewhere, because right now they’re in limbo. And Kelly still hasn’t told Stevens about Sam, and he should have done that ages ago, but he kept telling himself that he’d wait until they saw each other in person, and now here they are, hanging out together, and Kelly has yet to say a single word about Sam.

It doesn’t even matter, but not saying anything about it sort of feels like he’s lying.

“How’s Hooper, by the way?” Stevens asks.

“Hoops is probably gonna be out for a while,” Kelly says. Their defense is their greatest weakness right now. With Booksy and Hoops out for several weeks, they’ve been struggling quite a bit. Kelly narrows his eyes at Stevens. “Are you spying?”

“It’s not a secret that Hooper got injured last week.”

“Yeah, it really sucks for him,” Kelly says. He’s already nervous about the trade deadline, because there’s a good chance that there’ll be some people coming and going, especially if the Falcs keep earning points like they are now and it still looks like they’re headed for playoffs in a couple of weeks.

Kelly is well aware that he’s lucky that he got traded to a team that clinches a playoff spot often enough. The Falcs were a decent team even before Jack Zimmermann signed with them, but they’ve grown a lot over the past few years. They won the Cup the year the Aces didn’t even make it to playoffs.

Kelly keeps telling himself that if anyone gets traded, it won’t be him, because the Falcs traded a player and a draft pick to get him, so they must have really wanted him. And Kelly’s been doing pretty well. He’s scoring a decent amount of goals, and he’s third in assists on the team.

But in the end, all he can do is hope that he’ll get to stay.

“Hey, Stevie?” Kelly says. “Do you wanna stay in Seattle?”

“It’s not really my choice.”

“But if you had a choice?”

“If I had a choice I’d still be in Vegas…” Stevens glances over at him. “And you’d still be in Vegas, too.”

It’s one of those looks. One that lingers. And Kelly can’t look away, because he knows what they’re both thinking right now. If they were both still in Vegas, things would be very, very different between them.

Stevens’ arm is still draped over the back of the couch and his fingers brush against the nape of Kelly’s neck just for a second and the touch shoots through him like lightning.

And that’s it.

Maybe he should have known that one day he’d snap. He can’t do this anymore. He can’t have this weird thing between them that that’s always there somehow but amounts to nothing at all in the end. He can’t do this anymore.

Kelly grabs the remote and turns off the TV. “I met a guy, Stevie,” he says.

Stevens looks like Kelly just slapped him, but he catches himself quickly. “You did?”

“Yeah. New Year’s Eve. At Jack’s party.”

“And, uh… what’s he like?”

“His name’s Sam. He’s a chef. And he’s pretty much one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met in my entire life. Doesn’t know a thing about hockey, but he doesn’t mind if I talk about it anyway.” Kelly stares down at his hands, because he doesn’t want to see the look on Stevens’ face for the next bit. “I kissed him.”

“You did?”

Yes, Kelly kissed a boy on New Year’s Eve in Jack Zimmermann’s kitchen pantry. Kelly sneaks a glance at Stevens. He doesn’t have that great of a poker face. Kelly sighs. “It sucked.”

Stevens frowns, and clears his throat. “Why?”

Kelly shouldn’t say this. He really, really shouldn’t. They’ve been ignoring this whole thing. They were really good at ignoring it, too. Oh, fuck that, they weren’t. All those looks? Those little touches? They both want this. “Because,” Kelly says, “all I kept thinking about was that I’d rather be kissing you. And he was a really good kisser, you know? He was– I _liked_ him. But I didn’t like him as much as I like you.”

For a moment, Stevens says nothing, and Kelly can’t really blame him. Eventually, Stevens breathes out a quiet, “Oh.”

“Can you maybe say more than that? I’m totally gonna lose my shit. I’m so tired of this. Aren’t you tired? Don’t you just want to–”

Stevens’ fingers are back on Kelly’s neck. “I do.”

“Well, then…” Kelly grabs Stevens’ shirt and pulls until Stevens leans in, until he’s so close that their noses are almost touching.

“I have no idea what’s going to happen after this,” Stevens says.

Kelly knows what that means. It means that there’s a good chance that this will happen just this once and then Stevens will go back to Seattle and they’ll be a million miles apart again. And Kelly really doesn’t care. If this is the only time he gets to kiss Stevens, so be it. He doesn’t give a shit about the consequences anymore. “Neither do I,” Kelly says. “It’s okay.”

Maybe that’s a lie. Maybe it’s not really okay.

But then Stevens leans in to kiss him and it’s everything Kelly thought it would be, and two seconds later, when Stevens pulls him closer, it’s even more than Kelly thought it would be. Kelly ends up in Stevens’ lap, hands in his hair, and Stevens gasps quietly when Kelly’s teeth graze against his bottom lip. Kelly kisses the scar on Stevens’ cheek, then the line of his jaw, then he gives his hair a tug and Stevens lets his head fall back.

Kelly doesn’t think about what he’s doing here. If he starts thinking, he’ll realize that this is only gonna hurt in the end. He kisses Stevens’ neck and Stevens’ hands slip under the hem of Kelly’s shirt. Kelly turns his attention back to Stevens’ lips, his nose knocking against Stevens’.

“Sorry,” Kelly mumbles.

Stevens laughs. “S’okay, just slow down a little…” He brushes Kelly’s hair back and gives him a soft kiss, then he pulls away again, smiles, and leans in for another one. They trade a few of those slow, gentle kisses, but they quickly grow deeper again, and Kelly forgets about everything that isn’t Stevens. He forgets where they are, he forgets that this is temporary, he forgets that they’re gonna play against each other tomorrow.

Kelly doesn’t think enough to pick apart everything he’s feeling, he just chases those kisses and tries to commit it all to memory – what Stevens’ lips feel like against Kelly’s, the way they’re curved into a smile, and the warmth of Stevens’ fingertips on Kelly’s skin, and those soft little noises Stevens makes. He doesn’t want to forget any of that.

Stevens kisses the corner of Kelly’s mouth and Kelly smiles and ducks his head so he can rest it on Stevens’ shoulder. He feels tingly all over. Stevens holds him for a while and Kelly melts against him as Stevens trails his fingers up and down his back.

“Hey,” Stevens says after what could have easily been several hours. “Come here.” He tugs Kelly down with him and wraps an arm around him.

It feels like that summer almost two years ago, when Kelly sometimes woke up curled against Stevens, head tucked under his chin. Stevens kisses the top of Kelly’s head and then starts running his fingers through his hair. Kelly cut it all off at the beginning of the season, but now it’s already long enough again that Stevens can tug at it a little bit.

Kelly keeps still until his thoughts start to race, then he tilts his head up to kiss Stevens, again and again and again, until one kiss melts into the next.

He’s imagined this. He imagined Stevens pushing him against a wall and kissing him senseless, he imagined stealing kisses in the kitchen while Stevens cooks and Kelly sits on the counter and watches, he imagined waking Stevens up with a kiss in the morning, and he imagined this. Lying on this huge couch, their legs tangled, hands roaming, kissing and kissing and kissing like time doesn’t exist.

Except time does exist, so Stevens eventually pulls away and reaches across Kelly for his phone. “I have about half an hour until I have to leave.”

Kelly nudges Stevens with his nose. “Or you could just stay here.”

“Curfew,” Stevens says.

“I know,” Kelly grumbles. “Next time I’ll just sneak into your hotel room.”

Stevens doesn’t reply.

“Unless there won’t be a next time,” Kelly says.

“I don’t know if there’ll be a next time, I don’t– We really need to talk about this. But I’m leaving town tomorrow after the game and then we won’t get another chance to see each other until the end of the season.”

“Okay, so, when the season’s over I’ll come to Seattle or you’ll come here and we’ll just… figure this out.” Kelly has no idea how far the Falcs and the Schooners will make it in the post-season, there’s simply no way of telling. So they might not be able to really sit down and talk this through until June.

“Do you really think we can figure this out?” Stevens asks.

“I want to.”

“Sometimes wanting something isn’t enough, Kells.”

“Why do you always–” Kelly huffs and sits up. “It’s like you don’t even wanna try to make this work.”

“This?” Stevens props himself up as well. “What would you say is _this_?”

“I don’t know.”

“I want to take you out on dates, Kelly. I want to sleep in the same bed with you and I want to have breakfast with you in the morning. And that’s not going to happen.”

“I want that too. But we can do that in the summer and during the season we’ll just… we’ll talk on Skype and we’ll text and we each have a bye week, right? I mean, I went to the beach with the guys this year but next time I could come to Seattle and hang out with you, or I could meet you wherever the hell you are with the team.”

It’s not going to be that easy, of course. Because how are they even going to do half of those things when neither of them is out? Kelly isn’t sure why, but he’s convinced that they’d figure it out somehow. Maybe that’s how Jeff felt when he told Kelly that he and Kent would make it work if one of them got traded.

Stevens just sits there and looks at Kelly with those big green eyes and he clearly doesn’t know what to say.

And unless it’s something like, _Yes, let’s just try_ , Kelly doesn’t want to hear it anyway, so he reaches out and takes Stevens’ hand. “Are you at least gonna think about it? Like, take your time and write a pro and con list, I don’t care, but just think about it.” Kelly squeezes his hand. He’s waited this long and if he needs to wait longer still, he’s more than willing if there’s a chance that this will work out for them in the end. “Okay?”

Stevens nods and squeezes Kelly’s hand right back. “Okay.”

“So,” Kelly says, “we still have a couple of minutes, right?”

“We do,” Stevens says.

“All right…” Kelly crawls back into Stevens’ lap and hugs him as close as he can. “I don’t think I’m gonna fight you tomorrow.”

Stevens laughs quietly and leans back, Kelly still curled against him. “Aren’t you just the nicest guy in the NHL.”

“They should give me an award for that.”

Stevens kisses Kelly’s temple. “They should.”

They stay cuddled up on the couch until Stevens has to go and Kelly takes him to the door and leans up to kiss Stevens one last time before he leaves. “So you’ll think about it?”

“I’ll think about it,” Stevens says. He gives Kelly a tight hug. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For letting me think about it.” Stevens lets go and smiles at Kelly. “And for the pizza.”

Kelly laughs. “Sure. Anytime.”

*

It’s two in the morning and Kelly is wide awake. He’s exhausted and he’s pretty sure that he was actually asleep before he woke up for no reason whatsoever. Then he dozed for a little while. Now he’s staring into the darkness of his room, knowing full well that he won’t fall asleep with his eyes wide open, but he just can’t stop thinking.

It’s the beginning of February and it’s freezing and snow’s falling outside Kelly’s window and Kelly loves snow, but now he keeps thinking about Stevens. Snuggling up to him. Kissing him.

Kelly sighs and grabs his phone. It’s two in the morning here, so Stevens probably isn’t asleep yet. Or maybe he is, because he just got back from a week-long roadie. Instead of texting Stevens, Kelly opens Instagram to distract himself. He slowly goes through his feed and likes a couple of pictures, including one of Stevens hugging Oaksy’s dog.

He gets a text from Stevens about half a minute later: _Go to sleep Kells._

 _can’t sleep_ , Kelly says and adds a whole bunch of sad faces.

Stevens sends back a sad face, and then says, _Call if you want to talk_.

And of course Kelly calls, because they didn’t get too many chances to talk while the Schooners were on the road. The Falcs are going to Vegas and Dallas and Colorado in a few days and that won’t really make things easier.

“Hey,” Stevens says.

Kelly will never understand how a person’s voice can be that soothing. “Hey,” he mumbles.

“You wanna talk about it?” Stevens asks.

“About what?”

“About what’s keeping you up.”

“It’s a bunch of things,” Kelly says. “I don’t know. Can you just… talk for a lil bit?”

He usually wouldn’t ask Stevens to do that, because Stevens isn’t that much of a talker, but he just wants to lie here and listen to his voice for a little while. There’s been a lot on his mind lately. The trade deadline is inching closer and while Kelly isn’t too worried – he’s had multiple points in their last four games – it still keeps coming up and sometimes he can’t help but think something like, _But what if they get a really good deal for me and they do trade me and I end up somewhere else again_. He just got used to his life here in Providence. He wants to stay.

And then there’s the thing with Stevens obviously. Kelly doesn’t ask him if he’s made a decision yet. That’s why he told Stevens to think about it all in the first place, because he obviously needs time to figure this out for himself. Kelly, as he waits, is a total wreck, but he’s not going to fuck this up by being too impatient.

“Okay,” Stevens says. “My day wasn’t that exciting, but…”

“Doesn’t matter. Just talk to me.”

So Stevens tells him about his day and it really wasn’t that exciting, but Kelly smiles into his pillow anyway. He starts to drift a little, hums every now and then so Stevens will know that he’s still listening, but soon enough his eyelids start to flutter shut.

“Ready to go to sleep?” Stevens asks after a while. “I made the story extra boring.”

Kelly’s tired, but he’s not tired enough that he wants to stop talking. “I don’t wanna hang up yet, though.”

“Okay,” Stevens says. “Are you ready for your trip to Vegas next week?”

“No even a little bit. Actually, I’m really excited to see the guys. Jeff has been texting me, I think we’re gonna try to meet up.”

“Cool,” Stevens says.

Kelly pulls his duvet up this chin and yawns. “Maybe I should sleep.”

“Yeah, you should.”

“Can we talk tomorrow?”

“I’ll call you after the game,” Stevens says. “No, wait, that’s way too late for you.”

“It’s not,” Kelly says, even though they both know that it is. Kelly’s barely getting any sleep tonight, so he definitely shouldn’t stay up to talk to Stevens again tomorrow.

“I’ll call you before.”

“Yeah? You’re not too busy?”

“No,” Stevens says. “Tomorrow afternoon should be fine.”

“Good,” Kelly says.

They’re both quiet for a moment. Kelly knows that now’s the time to hang up, but he’d rather have Stevens on the other end of the line for a few more minutes, even if neither of them is saying a word.

Eventually, Stevens says, “I miss you.”

“Don’t say that,” Kelly mumbles. It hurts a little. Maybe it even hurts a lot.

“I’m sorry.”

Kelly sighs. “Whatever, I miss you too,” he says. “Hey, maybe you could call me on Skype tomorrow? I miss your face.”

“Sure,” Stevens says. Kelly can hear the smile in his voice. “You know…”

“Hmm?”

Stevens doesn’t reply right away. Kelly’s used to that from him; sometimes it just takes him a minute to sift through his thoughts and decide what to say. “I think we could make it work.”

And just like that, Kelly is wide awake again. “Really?”

“It’s not gonna be easy.”

“I wasn’t expecting it to be.”

“We should talk about this. Really talk about it. About what we’re going to do. How we’re going to deal with it.”

“Yeah, sure, you know I’ve been thinking, we should try to find at least a day each week when we talk and maybe we can spend more than a week together this summer? Like, a lot more than a week. We could train together. I don’t know. I don’t have it all figured out, but I really want it to work, Stevie.”

“I’m not gonna lie,” Stevens says, “I’m still scared that it won’t work out, but I guess we won’t know that until we try, right? Let’s just… let’s talk about it all when it’s not nearly three in the morning.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah, tomorrow sounds good. And maybe the day after.”

Yeah, this is gonna take a lot of talking. And Kelly is ready. He’s ready to do what it takes to make this work. There’s no way that he’ll be able to sleep now, not when he feels like bouncing up and down on his bed. “I wish I could kiss you right now.”

“Me too,” Stevens says. “Soon, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Kelly says. Soon, in this case, means in several weeks. But Kelly can get through that. He will.

*

Kelly is untying his skates when he hears Hawk say his name across the locker room. It’s relatively empty already – Kelly stayed on the ice for a bit longer with Jack and a few of the guys, just to shoot a few pucks around, then he did an interview with the Falcs’ PR people for one of their Falcs TV videos.

Since most of the guys are in the showers or already gone, it’s quiet enough for Kelly to clearly pick out his own name. Hawk is talking to Jack, and they’re both looking awfully serious. Kelly immediately starts to panic, because the trade deadline’s tomorrow and everyone’s been a little tense for the past week or so, but if he’d been traded, he wouldn’t be told by Jack and Hawk, right?

Kelly tilts his head and keeps his eyes fixed on them.

“No, I’m pretty sure,” Hawk is saying. “Kelly knows him.”

Jack looks over at him and sees that he’s watching them. He raises his eyebrows in question.

Kelly isn’t even sorry that he was eavesdropping. “Who’re you guys talking about?”

“Ezra Stevens,” Hawk says. “You played together for a while, right?”

“Yeah,” Kelly says. “For two years back in Vegas. Why?”

“See,” Hawk says and elbows Jack in the arm, “so he’ll already know someone.”

Kelly frowns. “What are you guys on about?”

“We just got Stevens in exchange for Alfie,” Hawk says. “We really needed another D-man, didn’t we?”

“In exchange for Alfie and one of the guys from our farm team,” Jack throws in. “Everett. I don’t think you’ve met him, they didn’t call him up this season, but he was one of our draft picks two years ago.”

“What? Stevens is… Are you sure?” Kelly unlocks his phone because maybe he missed this somehow? Did Stevens call him? Nope, there’s nothing at all. “How do you know?”

“George told Alfie before he went home and then she told us,” Jack says. “It just happened, it’s probably gonna take a bit for them to put out a press release.”

Kelly’s grin is so wide that his cheeks are hurting. “But he’s really coming? It’s totally certain?”

“Someone’s excited,” Hawk says, smirking. “Looks like we don’t have to worry about Stevens fitting in, huh?”

“I–” Kelly’s phone lights up with an incoming call from Stevens. And Kelly already knows what’s coming, but he can’t wait to hear Stevens say it.

“You should answer that,” Jack says, a small smile on his face.

Kelly nods and picks up his phone. He feels like he’ll never be able to stop smiling again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We did it, kids, we climbed this whole mountain!! So, there's one more chapter, because those boys still need to figure some things out, but y'all wanted them to be happy and GUESS WHAT.... THEY ARE. 
> 
> Side note: I don't think IKEA still sells stuffed broccoli, but in this fic they do. 
> 
> Shoutout to that one person who guessed that they'd both end up being Falcs, how did you know??
> 
> Anyway, I know I keep saying this, but thank you so much for your comments, you're all wonderful <3


	7. Chapter 7

“I don’t know what happened, I just sort of panicked,” Kelly says as he heaves Stevens’ suitcase into the trunk of his car. “Because they knew that we’re friends and they were talking about you getting here today and I just wasn’t thinking, I said I’d pick you up after the meeting and then I said, ‘You know what, he can stay at my place, we used to be roommates,’ like, I thought they were expecting me to and I–”

“Kelly, it’s–”

“And I didn’t even ask you, I feel like I made you, because you don’t really have a choice now, you just got here and now it’s like, ‘Oh, by the way, you’re staying with Keller, have fun.’ But I didn’t know what to say? I mean, it would have been weird if I’d said, ‘Actually, maybe ask him first if he wants to, because I’m not sure.’ So now you’re stuck with me and–”

“Kells,” Stevens says, fingers brushing against Kelly’s arm.

Kelly falls silent.

“It’s fine,” Stevens says, and smiles a little, and Kelly kinda needs to lie down.

“Okay,” Kelly breathes and they climb into his car and he turns on the radio and they don’t really talk much, but Kelly spends half the drive wondering if it’d be okay if he reached over and took Stevens’ hand.

They hugged at the rink, for approximately two seconds, because there were still a whole bunch of people around – Jack stuck around to say hello to Stevens as well – and then Kelly grabbed Stevens’ suitcase and made for his car, Stevens at his heels. And because he was so nervous, Kelly sort of started babbling about all the things he did wrong in the past twenty-four hours because he got a little overexcited about Stevens coming to Providence.

But it’s okay. It’ll be fine. Stevens is gonna come live with him, at least for– Actually, Kelly has no idea for how long. A couple of days probably. Maybe longer. Stevens literally just got here, so it’s definitely too early to ask him what his plans are, if he’d even consider moving into Kelly’s spare room, if he even thinks that it’s a good idea for them to live together again. They’re gonna need to sit down and talk about all of that, but not half a second after Stevens packed up his things in a hurry and moved to a different city.

That’s also why Kelly keeps his hands on the steering wheel. Stevens already has enough things on his mind without Kelly getting all worked up about this. Now is not the time to say, _Okay, but what does this mean for_ us _?_

There’ll be a time to figure that out. Not today, though.

Kelly glances over at Stevens, who’s staring out the window, lost in thought. “You okay?” Kelly asks.

Stevens turns to him, eyebrows raised. “Huh?”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“No, it’s cool. Do you need anything?”

Stevens shakes his head. “How long until we’re at your place?”

“Five minutes if traffic isn’t horrible,” Kelly says.

It takes ten and Stevens lets out a quiet sigh when they’re finally in Kelly’s apartment. Kelly takes his jacket, smirking at the plain black sweater he’s wearing.

“Didn’t wanna wear a Schooners hoodie for the meeting with the Falcs people, huh?” Kelly says.

Stevens looks down at his sweater. “Yeah, might have not been that great.”

They look at each other for a moment and Stevens finally cracks a smile. _Guess I’m really here now_ , it says. Kelly smiles back at him. _Yeah, guess you really are_.

“So, uh…” Kelly picks up Stevens’ massive suitcase, drags it down the hallway and pushes open the door across from his bedroom. He flicks on the lights, and says, “This is the spare room… I mean, you’ve been here before, you know that this is the spare room. I’ve actually never slept on that pull-out couch, so if it’s really horrible and everyone who’s slept on it was too polite to tell me, you can also sleep on the couch… or in my bed. But I’m totally not expecting you to sleep with me. In my bed. Or at all.” Kelly looks at the ceiling. “I need to stop talking.”

“Hey…” Stevens puts his arm around Kelly’s shoulders. “Take a deep breath.”

Kelly does. It doesn’t help. “Anyway, you can just put your stuff in here and sleep wherever you want.”

Actually, Stevens could also put his stuff into Kelly’s room, but Kelly doesn’t want to scare the shit out of him by suggesting that. He needs to tread carefully, he knows that by now. Stevens doesn’t seem like the sort of guy who gets overwhelmed, because he’s usually so calm and steady – at least off the ice – but Kelly knows him. He knows that Stevens likes to think things through, and sometimes that takes time. With this trade, Stevens probably didn’t have time to think about _anything_.

“Do you just want to, uh…” Kelly waves his hand. “I’ll give you a minute.”

“Kells,” Stevens says, his hand slowly running down Kelly’s back, tugging at the hem of his sweater. “Can I just–”

“Yeah, sure, of course.”

Stevens pulls him close, wraps his arms around Kelly, and kisses his temple. “I wanted to do this at the rink.” He leans down further and kisses Kelly’s cheek. “And this.”

“Well,” Kelly says and steals a proper kiss, “I wanted to do that.”

Stevens hums and leans in for another one. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but Kelly spent a ridiculous amount of time thinking back to that one evening before they played the Schooners and Stevens was here and they kissed for the first time. And now he’s back and they’re kissing again, but this time Stevens is staying.

Honestly? Kelly isn’t sure for how long he would have survived the long-distance thing. Because he was already missing Stevens like hell and if Stevens hadn’t gotten traded to the Falcs, they would have gone at least a couple of weeks and maybe even a few more months without seeing each other. Because the way it looks right now, the Falcs are headed to playoffs. That’s why they wanted Stevens in Providence in the first place; Hoops and Booksy are both still injured and at least Hoops is unlikely to be okay to play in the first round.

“I missed you so much,” Kelly says between kisses.

Stevens gives him a tight squeeze.

“Right, so…” Kelly pulls away, his hand still on Stevens’ sides. He’s not letting go until he has to. “Do you want me to find you something to eat?”

“I’m good for now. They had snacks at the meeting.”

“Are you sure? Do you want… I don’t know, what do you need? You’ve been on a plane all day, and then you went straight to that meeting and now you’re probably exhausted.”

“I’m fine,” Stevens says, his thumb drawing slow circles on Kelly’s back. “This is good.”

It is good, but Kelly has a hard time believing that Stevens doesn’t want to go straight to bed. Stevens is going to morning skate with Kelly tomorrow and there’s a good chance that he’ll play in the game against the Aeros tomorrow night. Kelly wouldn’t want to be in his shoes right now and he’s not really sure what he can do to help. For now, Kelly just holds on to him for a few minutes.

“D’you wanna go sit down? Watch a movie?”

Stevens nuzzles into Kelly’s hair. “Hmm, okay.”

“I’m gonna order food,” Kelly says. Because even though they had snacks at the meeting, Stevens is probably gonna be hungry soon enough. And there’s nothing too appealing in his fridge right now. He was gonna go buy groceries before Stevens got here, but then he also had to tidy up the spare room, so his trip to the grocery store was cancelled.

“Do you ever cook?”

“Not today.”

“I could–”

Kelly kisses him. “Nope, not today.” He pushes Stevens out the door, into the hallway. “Come on, let’s go sit down.”

He successfully gets Stevens to sit down on the couch, then Stevens calls his mom, while Kelly calls the Italian place down the street that also delivers. Stevens talks to his mom for about five minutes and it’s all, “No, you don’t have to come to the game tomorrow, I don’t even know if I’m playing yet,” and, “Yes, I’m fine, I’m staying with Kells,” and, “Seriously, just come to a game in a week or two,” and after he’s ended the call he just sighs and leans back, eyes closed.

Kelly sits down next to him and tucks himself against Stevens’ side. “This okay?” he asks. He doesn’t know how this is going to work yet. They did just make out in his spare room for a bit there, but maybe Stevens needs a break. Like, from everything.

But Stevens says, “Yeah,” and puts an arm around Kelly, so it seems that Kelly hasn’t managed to fuck up just yet.

They don’t talk much, not when they’re just sitting there, not when they’re having dinner. Stevens lets Kelly pick a movie and once he’s done with his pasta, he leans against Kelly, and Kelly can’t help but wonder if this is how it’s going to be from now on, if they’re going to sit on this couch together every day and watch movies and maybe cuddle a little. Because Kelly could get used to that.

He knows that whatever is going to happen from here on out, they’re not going to jump headfirst into it. They talked as much as they could ever after they’d decided that they’d give this relationship a try and Kelly remembers when Stevens said, “I’ve never done any of this before with a guy. None of… you know. Nothing. I just always ignored the crushes I had on guys, because I thought it’d make things easier, but… it didn’t, not really.”

It’s not like Kelly is a fountain of experience either.

The thing is, when they had that conversation, everything was different.

“Stevie?”

Stevens shifts and looks up, his nose bumping against Kelly’s jaw. “Hm?”

Yeah, maybe now is not the time to ask when exactly they’re gonna try to figure all of this out. Stevens sounds like he was half-asleep already. Kelly picks up a pillow and puts it in his lap. “You wanna lie down?”

Stevens nods and curls up with his head in Kelly lap. “I wasn’t going to fall asleep on you this early.”

“S’okay,” Kelly says and runs his fingers through Stevens’ hair. It’s short enough that it only curls a little at the tips. Kelly wonders if he’ll grow it out again during playoffs. He actually hopes so.

Stevens makes a content little noise, so Kelly keeps going.

“Wake me up when you’re going to bed?” Stevens mumbles.

“Sure,” Kelly says.

Stevens is asleep about half a second later. Kelly barely even looks at the TV, he’s too busy staring down at Stevens. Kelly spent about half the day worrying about what was going to happen when Stevens got here and about how they’re going to deal with this and it’s only now that he’s starting to feel like it’s actually going to be fine.

Sitting here with Stevens’ head in his lap? That’s easy. And maybe later they’ll curl up in bed together. That’s easy too; they’ve done that before. And maybe Kelly’s gonna steal a kiss or two before he says good night, and he’s never done that before, but he already can’t wait. He’s never been in an actual relationship before, there were just all those undefined _somethings_ that obviously never went anywhere, so he doesn’t really know what to expect, but there are still all those little things he wants to do. Little things like sitting on his couch with a guy’s head in his lap.

Kelly eventually picks up his phone and replies to Jeff, who texted him as soon as he’d heard that Stevens was headed for Providence. They’ve been talking ever since. Kelly keeps in touch with Flo, so he knows what’s going on in Vegas, but Kelly really misses Jeff and he’s weirdly glad that Jeff still checks in with him every now and then.

Kelly lets Stevens sleep for a little while, but he eventually starts yawning, so he turns off the TV that was just background noise anyway, and gives Stevens a gentle nudge. “Stevie…”

“Hm…”

“Time to go to bed,” Kelly whispers.

“Mm’kay,” Stevens says and sits up, rubbing his eyes.

“You can have the bathroom first.”

“Thanks, Kells.”

Kelly stays on the couch and listens as Stevens rummages through his things in the spare room and eventually shuffles to the bathroom. He closes his eyes and smiles at those little sounds that come with having something else around.

He hears the bathroom door unlock and the footsteps approaching the living room, but he doesn’t open his eyes.

“You asleep?” Stevens asks.

Kelly cracks an eye open. Stevens is leaning in the doorway in his boxers and one of his faded college shirts. “No, not sleeping, just…” Kelly shrugs. Just trying to wrap his head around everything that happened today.

“So,” Stevens says.

“So?”

“Is it really okay if I…” Stevens shifts and stares down at his bare feet. “Listen, Kells, we gotta talk about all of this.”

“I know,” Kelly says, he grabs his phone and gets up. “Maybe not tonight, though? I mean, you look like you’re gonna fall asleep sometime in the next five seconds and you probably already have a shitton of stuff on your mind and I– It can wait a couple of days.”

Stevens nods. “I just don’t want you to feel like you have to let me sleep in your bed, because this…” He thinks for a moment, his eyes on Kelly. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to do _anything_.”

“I don’t,” Kelly says. “I want you to… if you want to.”

“You want me to _what_?”

“I don’t know… A lot of things. But for now, can you just come to bed with me?”

Stevens smiles a little. “Sure, yeah.”

“All right,” Kelly says and stands on his tiptoes to kiss Stevens’ stubbly cheek. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

When Kelly’s done in the bathroom, he finds Stevens already snuggled up in bed, on the same side he always slept on when he was visiting Kelly in Canada, and the same side he slept on whenever Kelly accidentally (or not-so-accidentally) fell asleep in his bed back in Vegas.

Kelly pulls on one of his Aces shirts to sleep in, just because, and he can see Stevens’ lips twitch when he crawls into bed with him.

“I’ll set an alarm for morning skate,” Kelly says as he plugs in his phone.

Stevens only hums, eyes already closed, almost asleep again.

“Good night, Stevie,” Kelly says and switches off the lamp next to the bed.

“Night, Kells,” Stevens says and pulls Kelly against him.

Yeah, he could _so_ get used to this.

*

In the morning, Kelly dumps all of his Falconers gear on his bed for Stevens to look at. “Okay, so you can borrow whatever you want, I mean, the guys are gonna chirp you no matter what, but it’s gonna be even worse if you show up in a Schooners shirt.” He holds up one of the hoodies. “This one’s a bit bigger than the others, but it has my number on it, so I’m not sure if–”

Stevens takes the hoodie from him. “This one’s fine.”

“The guys are probably gonna have something to say about that.”

“I can take a different one if you–”

“No, take that one,” Kelly says. He can deal with the chirps. Anyway, most of the other ones are a size too small for Stevens anyway.

“Okay,” Stevens says and pulls it on. It’s a tight fit and he looks ridiculously handsome. Stevens shakes his head at Kelly. “Stop it.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re looking,” Stevens says. His cheeks are pink.

“Yeah, I’m looking,” Kelly says and steps closer, putting his arms around Stevens.

“Hm, maybe you can keep looking,” Stevens says and gives Kelly a slow, lingering kiss.

“I actually have no idea how to stop looking at you. How did Parse and Swoops do this? We didn’t even know they were together for months, how did they hide that from us?”

“I don’t know, maybe we just weren’t very observant.”

Kelly sighs. “Well, I just won’t look at you.”

“At all?”

“Nope.”

“What if you have to pass me a puck?”

“I’ll do it without looking,” Kelly says. “I’m just that good.”

They have breakfast together, Kelly’s feet resting against Stevens’ under the table, and afterwards Kelly drives them to the Falcs’ practice rink. The guys are all over Stevens when they get there, there are some jokes about Stevens raiding Kelly’s closet, Jack hands Stevens a pie from Bitty, and Tater throws an arm around him and tells him that he won’t have to worry about any shenanigans if he’s willing to share the pie with the rest of the team.

Kelly only shakes his head at Stevens and Tater. Tater is grinning too broadly to be telling the truth and Stevens has too much experience to believe a word he’s saying.

Stevens ends up getting paired with Tater to replace Hoops for now. And Kelly tries not to look at him too much. But they’re at morning skate together for the first time in nearly three years and Stevens keeps skating past him and tapping him with his stick, so occasionally Kelly has to look. And when he looks he can’t help but smile a little.

“Good to have him back on the same team, huh?” Hawk says to Kelly when Stevens gives him a tap for what feels like the fiftieth time.

“Yeah,” Kelly says. He doesn’t even want to know how broad his grin is.

Hawk pats his helmet. “I’m still gonna steal his clothes tomorrow after practice.”

Kelly nods. He expected as much.

After morning skate, Stevens, to nobody’s surprise, ends up being put on media duty with Jack and Tater. Kelly sticks around, Lundy sitting next to him, four Falcs caps in hand. Kelly has no idea where he got those from, but in the course of Stevens’ interview they all end up on top of the cap one of the Falcs’ PR people handed to Stevens before.

“…and everyone’s great, you know, it was all a bit hectic, but I’m here now and I’m really excited to–” Lundy reaches out to put cap number three on Stevens’ head, “–play with these guys tonight.”

“Was coming here easier because you knew you’d be playing with one of your former teammates?”

“Yeah, it was definitely nice to know that I have a friend on the team, but I’ve met a bunch of these guys before, you know, they’re great and I wasn’t too worried.”

“Give me that,” Kelly whispers and snatches the last cap from Lundy. He leans over Lundy and adds the cap to the small tower that’s already on Stevens’ head.

Lundy giggles. “He has a great pokerface, you have to give him that.”

When they wrap up the interview, Stevens turns to them, shaking his head. The tower of caps stays where it is.

“Welcome to Providence,” Lundy says and holds up his hand for a first bump. “Keep the hats.”

Stevens knocks his fist against Lundy’s. “Thanks.”

*

“This pie is amazing,” Stevens says between bites.

“I know,” Kelly says, still chewing.

They managed to make it back to Kelly’s with the whole pie still intact, but Stevens cut himself a small slice as soon as they were home and he got one for Kelly as well.

“You’re a better person than me,” Kelly goes on. “I didn’t share my pie with anyone.”

“Well, you’re sharing your apartment with me, so…” Stevens finishes his slice with a happy sigh. “I wonder if the recipe for this pie is in my cookbook.”

“Did you bring it?”

“The cookbook? No, but I’m gonna have to get all my stuff from Seattle at some point. It’s a good thing that Jakey lives in the same building, so he can make sure that everything’s all right at my place every now and then.”

“I guess you could just ask Bitty for the recipe,” Kelly says. “Man, if you learn how to make pie like this…”

Stevens smirks. “Yeah?”

Kelly wants to say something like, _I’ll love you forever_ , but maybe now’s not the time to say something like that. “I’ll help you eat all of it.”

“Yeah, I’m counting on that.”

Kelly grins. “What if we both score tonight and it’s because of the pie?”

“I’m not getting superstitious about this pie,” Stevens says. “So, uh…” He puts down his plate. “Wanna take a nap?”

Kelly sets down his plate as well. “I usually sleep on the couch. Wanna come?”

Stevens follows him into the living room and, not for the first time, Kelly is glad that he got about the biggest couch he could fit in here without it looking completely ridiculous.

“How do you want to…”

“Just…” Kelly lies down and makes sure there’s enough room for Stevens next to him. “There’s enough room for both of us.”

“Yeah,” Stevens says and lies down next to him. He’s still wearing Kelly’s Falconers hoodie.

Kelly taps the number on the front. “Maybe we can get a pen and turn that into a twenty-nine, eh?”

“Nah,” Stevens says.

“Well, I guess you’re gonna get your own soon anyway.”

“Yeah.”

Kelly leaves his hand curled against Stevens’ chest. He can only hope that he won’t kick Stevens in the shin again like he did last night. Kelly’s a restless sleeper, okay? Anyway, Stevens knows that, he’s making a choice here. He’s taking the risk.

They sometimes took pregame naps together in Vegas, but they usually didn’t cuddle like this. Kelly could get used to this as well.

“I might keep it,” Stevens mumbles.

“Hm?”

“Your hoodie.”

“Oh,” Kelly says. “Yeah. Keep it.” He really, really wants him to. He thinks of Jeff wandering about the Aces’ rink with Kent’s number on his hoodie. Maybe one day he’ll be able to do that, too. The thought puts a smile on his face, like pretty much every thought of Stevens does.

Later, Kelly picks a tie for Stevens and he lets Stevens pick a tie for him. Three times. Until Stevens picks the one Kelly wants to wear.

Before they leave, Kelly stops in front of the door. They’ve left for a game together so many times, but it’s been ages, and Kelly just wants to enjoy it for a moment. It’s weird, but he doesn’t remember the last time. Maybe because neither of them knew that it was the last time; they thought they’d both come back to Vegas for the next season, but in the end it was just one of them.

Kelly looks up at Stevens, who’s patiently waiting for him to get a move on. “Are you gonna walk out behind me again?” Kelly asks.

“I don’t know, who usually walks out behind you?”

“Hawk. I don’t think he’d mind, he’s just superstitious about his stick tape.” Kelly takes a deep breath. “Ready?”

“Yeah,” Stevens says. Of course he’s ready. Kelly is the one who’s weirdly excited; Stevens looks like nothing can shake him. He’s always been like that and Kelly has always envied him for it. “Actually…” Stevens leans down and stops an inch from Kelly’s face.

“Good idea,” Kelly says and that inch vanishes and he kisses Stevens. For a minute. Maybe two. It’s fine, they won’t be late, not if they really leave now. And maybe after the drive to the stadium they’ll both look a little less red in the face. Kelly tugs at the lapels of Stevens’ coat. “What if we score because we kissed?”

“Then I’ll just have to kiss you before every game. I can live with that.”

“Yeah,” Kelly says, “me too.”

*

Stevens does stand behind him before they walk out onto the ice. They don’t talk and Kelly doesn’t turn around to look at Stevens, but right before it’s time to go, Stevens tugs on his jersey, like he always did in Vegas.

Kelly, still not looking around, reaches back with his stick and gives Stevens’ leg a tap.

There was a good chance that they’d never come back to this, that they’d never play together again. And now they’re here again, thanks to nothing but circumstance. It almost feels like an apology from the universe for keeping them apart. It’s like that annoyingly optimistic thing his mom always says… _Sometimes you just have to give your life the chance to fall into place_.

Because that’s exactly what happened, isn’t it? And Kelly’s going to relish every damn minute.

Stevens is in the starting line-up with Tater and Kelly is weirdly proud of him. Stevens is a great player, no doubt about it, but he isn’t much of a goal-scorer and he’s, quite frankly, totally underrated.

Fifteen minutes into the first period, they’re on the ice together and Stevens finds Kelly right in front of the net. Kelly isn’t sure how he manages to get that puck past the Aeros’ goalie, he just hits it and then the goal horn goes off. Stevens sweeps him into a hug behind the net and for a moment it’s just the two of them clinging to each other before Tater, Lundy and Hawk join them in a group hug.

Kelly’s pretty sure that, no matter what else happens, this will be his favorite goal of the season.

*

Kelly wakes up sometime in the middle of the night when Stevens wraps an arm around him and pulls him against his chest. It’s still pitch-dark in Kelly’s room and Stevens is fast asleep, his breath tickling the back of Kelly’s neck.

They were both knackered after the game, but Kelly still managed to steal a few kisses before they went to bed.

Kelly turns over and tucks his head under Stevens’ chin. He’ll probably roll away from Stevens at some point after he falls asleep, and in the morning he might wake up curled back against Stevens or with Stevens’ arm back around him, or with his leg hooked around Stevens’. It still feels new.

During the night, Kelly wakes up a lot more often with Stevens sleeping next to him, but that’s a price he’s willing to pay. Last night, he fell right back asleep every time they accidentally woke each other up, but now it’s not that easy.

Thoughts keep creeping up on him whenever he thinks he’s about to drift off.

Kelly isn’t sure for how long he lies awake – thinking about everything, but not thinking anything through – but he eventually scoots away from Stevens and slips out of bed. Stevens makes a noise almost like he’s complaining that Kelly’s leaving, but Kelly needs a minute.

He goes to the kitchen for a glass of water but ends up pouring himself some cereal. Whatever, it’s three in the morning and he’s having a crisis, a glass of water won’t do it. He’s almost tempted to steal some of Stevens’ pie, but it’s not actually that bad and he’s not a pie thief.

So Kelly eats his cereal and tries his hardest not to panic.

There’s no point in panicking when he still doesn’t know where this thing with Stevens and him is even going. They’re going to talk. And they’ll figure it out. And Kelly will not panic. Even though he currently has about a hundred panic-worthy thoughts on his mind.

Kelly glares at his cereal. He could just enjoy that Stevens is here, but no, he has to go and overthink every little thing.

“Kells?”

Kelly almost drops his bowl. He was so lost in thought that he didn’t even notice Stevens. “Fucking hell.”

“You okay?”

“Totally,” Kelly says. The lie hangs in the air between them for a moment, then he sighs. “Okay, not really.”

“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?” Stevens asks. He’s still standing in the doorway, like he’s ready to go back to bed if Kelly tells him to leave him alone.

Kelly puts down his bowl. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Stevens says. He slowly walks into the kitchen and leans against the counter beside Kelly. “Start anywhere.”

Kelly nudges Stevens’ ankle with his foot, just because he can. Anywhere. Sure, he’ll start _anywhere_. “I really like this.”

“You– What?”

Okay, Kelly definitely understands why Stevens is looking at him like he’s not making any sense. Maybe that doesn’t sound like an actual problem, but it really sort of is. Or it could become one. “I like having you here, I like sleeping in the same bed with you and kissing you in my kitchen and I– I don’t want you to leave. And I haven’t even asked you if you want to stay, so I’m already fucking this up, aren’t I?”

“You’re not, it’s fine.”

“It’s fine? You’re– How are you not totally losing it? You’re here and I’m here and we thought we’d somehow have to make this thing between us work because we thought we’d be living a billion miles apart and now we’re suddenly not. I have no idea what to do. I’ve never done the whole relationship thing, but you have. You’ve had girlfriends, like Haley, and those girls you told me about that you were seeing in college and I’ve never–”

“Kells,” Stevens says and takes Kelly’s wrist, thumb gently rubbing over his skin. “You’re getting way ahead of yourself.”

“I know, but what if I do everything wrong? I’m doing everything wrong already. I’m freaking out on you at three in the morning for absolutely no reason. I just can’t stop thinking about you and me and what’s going to happen. And it’s fine if you want to find your own place, all I was trying to say was that I wouldn’t mind if you stayed. You obviously don’t have to.”

“I–”

“And you don’t have to make any decisions right now, because it’s late and you probably want to go back to bed.”

Stevens tugs him close. “Let’s talk about this tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” Kelly says. Maybe he could have just said something like, _Hey, Stevie, can we talk about our relationship?_ But that would have been way too easy.

“I’ll cook dinner.”

“You sure?”

“I want to,” Stevens says. “Come on…” Arms still around Kelly, he slowly walks him to towards the door. “Back to bed.”

“Yeah,” Kelly says and lets Stevens push him down the hall and back into bed.

Before he turns off the bedside lamp, Stevens hovers over Kelly, smiling softly. “Everything okay for now?”

Kelly nods.

Stevens nudges him with his nose. “Good.”

“Mhm…” Kelly threads his fingers into Stevens hair to pull him down for a kiss.

“Okay, go back to sleep, Kells.”

“One more,” Kelly says.

Stevens obliges and then rolls off him.

“One m–”

“I’m going to be unbearable tomorrow morning if I don’t get enough sleep,” Stevens says, but leans over to give Kelly another kiss. He turns off the lights, pulls at the sheets and makes sure that Kelly is tucked in as well.

“Stevie,” Kelly whispers. “One more.”

Stevens laughs and misses Kelly’s mouth when he leans in for a kiss.

“Try again.”

This time he doesn’t miss and this time he doesn’t pull away for a little while either. “Better?” Stevens asks.

“Much better,” Kelly says.

“One more?”

“Yeah, one more.”

It’s more than one in the end, a lot more, but that’s all right. He’s gonna get up before Stevens and he’s gonna bring him a cup of coffee before he even gets up. And maybe they’ll also take an extra long nap after practice.

*

“This is weird,” Kelly says. “I feel like that time my dad sat me down to give me the talk.”

Stevens’ lips twitch. “Do you wanna go sit on the couch?”

“No, this is fine…” Kelly pushes at his plate. Stevens made dinner – chicken parmesan because he just knows Kelly that well – and they’re still sitting at the kitchen table, their plates now empty. They’re gonna talk now and Kelly is nervous like this is some sort of test. “It’s fine.”

“Hey, Kells?” Stevens says and nudges Kelly’s foot under the table. “I still like you and you still like me, right?”

“Yeah, of course I like you, why would you even think that I–”

“No, I’m just saying, we still like each other, so we’re just gonna talk about how we’re going to deal with this. Like when we figured out how we’d do things long-distance.”

“Right,” Kelly says. He’s still scared that he’ll say the wrong thing and that Stevens will hate him all of a sudden. Although Kelly hasn’t managed that in the last couple of years; they’re still friends, even though Kelly is such a mess sometimes.

“Okay, well, last night you said…”

“Yeah, so…” Kelly grabs his napkin and fiddles with it just to keep his hands busy. “What I’m thinking is… I have that spare room. And I hate living on my own. And now you’re here and some of your stuff is already in that spare room, so we’d be together, but you’d also have your own room, because I know you like having your own room. So, if you want it, it’s yours. But if you want your own place, because you’ve had your own place for the last couple of years or because you think it’s a bad idea or because you’ll get sick of me because we’ll see each other at the rink all the time anyway, it’s fine too.” Kelly takes a deep breath. “Sorry, that was a lot.”

“I mean, it would make things easier if I stayed. Because we’d see each other all the time, yeah, but we couldn’t…” Stevens shrugs. “The team doesn’t know. So it’d be nice to come home and just… have this.”

“Yeah, it’d be really nice.”

Stevens chews on his bottom lip. “I have a lot of stuff,” he says.

“I know. We can get more shelves for your books.”

Stevens smiles. “Sounds good.”

“But if you stay, you have to stop using my toothpaste. I know you forgot yours in Seattle, but get your own.”

“Fine,” Stevens says. “And you have to stop leaving the dishes in the sink.”

“But–”

“Just put them in the dishwasher, Kelly.”

Kelly rolls his eyes.

“And you can’t complain if I put veggies in the fridge.”

“They take up a lot of space.”

“Your fridge is _huge_.”

“Okay, put as many veggies in there as you want. Anyway… if you stay, it’ll be your fridge too. Just don’t touch my Nutella.”

“Please tell me your Nutella isn’t in the fridge.”

“Of course it’s not, I’m not a savage.”

Stevens smiles so wide that Kelly sort of wants to postpone the rest of this and kiss him senseless instead, but they’ll be on the road for a couple of days after the game tomorrow, so they wouldn’t get a good chance to talk until they’re back in Providence. They have to talk about the important stuff at least.

“What about the team?” Kelly asks. “Are we gonna tell them at some point?”

“Maybe not right away,” Stevens says. “I mean, we haven’t even– Kells.”

“Yeah?”

“I really want to take you out on a date.”

“Okay?”

“I don’t know how that’s going to work logistically if we don’t want anyone to know about this for now, but can I at least take you out for dinner?”

“You can take me out for dinner and we can get a table in the back where no one can see us and play footsie under the table,” Kelly says with a grin. “And then you can walk me home and I’ll ask you if you want to come upstairs and you can say, ‘Kelly, I live here too,’ and then we can come up here and I’ll kiss you and after that we can… kiss a lot more. And then we’ll take things from there.”

“I’d like that,” Stevens says.

“And if you still like me after that date, we can go out on another one.”

“Yeah.”

“And then another one.”

Stevens smirks.

“And after we’ve done that a couple of times, maybe we can tell Jack?” Kelly says. He was always planning on telling Jack – and the rest of the team – eventually. But he never even told the entire team in Vegas, because there’s still that teeny tiny part of him that’s scared that the guys will take it badly. Which is, of course, ridiculous, because Jack is literally married to another guy that the entire teams loves to pieces, so objectively Kelly knows that he has nothing to worry about.

“Just Jack?” Stevens asks.

“Maybe the rest of the guys too. But later. I don’t know. They don’t even know that I’m gay. Kinda wanna tell my parents that I have a boyfriend first, to be honest.”

Stevens nods. He doesn’t miss a beat; he’s not scared of a word like _boyfriend_. “No need to rush it. I mean, I never told anyone other than you and my mom. Frank doesn’t know. Shit, I’m gonna have to tell him.”

“Do you think he’s gonna be weird about it?” Kelly isn’t worried about his own family. Sure, he’ll only tell his mom and dad, and probably his sister, but he’s a thousand percent sure that they’ll be fine with it. Stevens is part of the family already.

“No, I just hate telling people.”

“I know. I mean, I nearly cried when I told you.”

Stevens scrunches up his nose and he actually looks a little guilty.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Kelly says, “I cry about everything. Last week Swoops sent me a picture of Sunny’s puppy and I almost cried about that too.”

“Well, it’s a really cute puppy,” Stevens says.

“Yeah,” Kelly says. He takes his plate and stands up. “I’ll take care of the dishes, all right?”

“Are you going to put them in the dishwasher?”

“Maybe.”

“You promised,” Stevens says.

“I know,” Kelly replies and gives Stevens a kiss before he takes Stevens’ plate as well and puts them both in the sink.

Stevens groans.

Kelly really missed living with him.

*

Stevens is still asleep when Kelly wiggles out from under his arm. It’s early and Kelly’s alarm won’t go off for another hour, because they decided to skip their morning run.  

Kelly grabs a shirt off the armchair by the window. It’s one of Stevens’ brand new Falconers shirts, one that’s big on Stevens and even bigger on Kelly. At this point, he is actually convinced that Stevens asked for a shirt a size bigger just for Kelly’s benefit, because he knows that Kelly likes wearing big shirts as pajamas. Stevens hardly ever wears it, but he leaves it lying around, and Kelly accidentally put it into his suitcase before their roadie last week. Stevens didn’t say a word about it, so Kelly didn’t give it back until they returned to Providence a few days ago.

He casts one last look at Stevens, who’s now hugging the duvet – maybe Kelly should have given him the broccoli to cuddle, but he looks content enough. Kelly almost wants to crawl back into bed and just stare at Stevens for a bit until his alarm goes off, but since he’s already awake, he might as well do something nice for Stevens.

First he needs to drink about four cups of coffee, though.

Kelly heads to the kitchen and grabs the biggest mug he can find, then he looks through the cupboards to find the pancake mix. Stevens could make them from scratch and they’d be a hundred times better, Kelly knows that, but he doesn’t want to wake him up.

They had the day off yesterday, but Kelly wouldn’t let Stevens sleep in because they needed to get some furniture for the spare room. They also got a plant for the windowsill in the kitchen, even though Kelly told Stevens several times that he already has a plant, the one Hawk gave to him when he moved in, and that it’s still alive and well, thank you very much.

“It’ll look nice,” Stevens said and then he did the puppy-eyes thing.

“Yeah, okay, time to accept that my kitchen is now your kitchen.”

“It’s still your kitchen too, I just think–”

“Buy the fucking cactus, Stevie.”

“It’s a succulent.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“Not all succulents are cacti.”

“Just fucking buy it.”

Anyway, they now own a succulent that may or may not be a cactus and it’s on the windowsill in the kitchen. And it does look kinda nice.

And then last night, they finally went out on a date. Their real first date. They went to this fancy burger place they sometimes go to with the team, because it has all those nice little nooks where you can hide from everyone else, at least a little bit. Kelly nearly poured his soda over the table because he was so nervous. Then he dipped his sleeve into tomato sauce.

It went pretty well after that.

Like, really, really well.

So well that Kelly is now making coffee in nothing but an oversized Falconers shirt. He still hasn’t found the pancake mix, though.

“Coffee?”

Kelly looks over his shoulder to find Stevens in the doorway. Not only did he manage to put on a shirt, but he also found a pair of sweatpants. Stevens is smirking. Probably because Kelly didn’t even _try_ to find anything that even resembles pants. At least he has a really big shirt.

“Why’re you up already?” Kelly asks.

“You got up. I thought you’d come back, but you didn’t.”

Kelly nods at the coffeemaker, because that should explain things. “Sorry.”

Stevens shuffles over to him and reaches out to brush his fingers through Kelly’s hair. “It’s okay.”

“Hmm…” Kelly wraps his arms around Stevens’ shoulders. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Stevens says and gives him a quick kiss.

“Don’t, I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”

“Neither have I,” Stevens grumbles, but he kisses Kelly’s cheek instead.

“Still.”

Stevens laughs. “You’re cute,” he says. His face goes flaming red and Kelly loves it.

“You think I’m cute?”

“Yeah,” Stevens says. “I do.”

“Aw… I guess maybe you can kiss me after all.”

Stevens is still smiling when he leans in. He pushes Kelly back against the counter, hands on his sides, and the shirt’s definitely not staying where it should, but it’s just the two of them here, so who cares if Kelly is half-naked in his kitchen.

“Do you want to come back to bed?” Stevens asks.

“I was gonna make you breakfast.”

“And burn the building down?”

Kelly gives Stevens a pinch. “Hey, I can cook a little bit.”

“Yeah, a little bit.”

“Whatever,” Kelly says, and tilts his head up so he can kiss Stevens’ jaw. “You could help me.”

“Or…” Stevens says, his hands slipping under Kelly’s shirt.

“Yeah, no, okay, let’s go back to bed.”

The coffee can wait.

*

“If we win tomorrow…”

“Yeah?” Stevens says.

Kelly can’t even see his face, because he’s lying on top of Stevens, head on his chest, but he’s pretty sure that Stevens has his eyes closed and was just about to fall asleep. It’s not even that late, but Stevens has never been particularly invested in Project Runway, especially if it’s just reruns. “Did I wake you up?”

“Nah,” Stevens says and rubs Kelly’s back.

“So, if we win tomorrow,” Kelly says again, “we’re getting a playoff spot.”

Stevens laughs. “I know.”

“And we’ll play together. In a whole bunch of playoff games.” Kelly sighs happily, then he gives Stevens’ chest a pat. “Okay, now you can go back to sleep.”

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

“Then go back to not sleeping.”

“All right,” Stevens says and goes back to trailing his fingers up and down Kelly’s back instead. “Are you nervous?”

“A little. Mostly excited, though,” Kelly says. Wouldn’t it be nice if they got to have this now that they’re finally back on the same team? “I’m glad that you’ll be there with me.”

“Yeah,” Stevens says. “I’ll be right behind you.”

*

That year, the Falconers clinch a playoff spot with several games still left in the regular season.

Before their first playoff game, Stevens stands behind Kelly, like he always does. Usually they don’t talk, but today he leans close to Kelly and says, “Ready?”

Kelly doesn’t turn around. He nods. “Yeah.”

Stevens tugs at Kelly’s jersey, and Kelly has never been less scared in his entire life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well then, my friends, that's it from me (for now) (watch me turn this into an actual novel) (no I won't, it's still fanfic). 
> 
> I'm going to mark this fic as the first part of a series that you can subscribe to if you want to, because I'm definitely not done with these rookies just yet and I'm sure that there'll be more fic about them in the future. There are a whole bunch of little fics and snippets on my tumblr (@zimmermaenner) if you're looking for even more rookies content.
> 
> I honestly can't thank you enough for your support! It really means a lot that you were willing to read a fic that was practically just about my OCs and I hope you enjoyed reading this last chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it :)

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to come by on tumblr and talk to me about my rookies (or literally anything else). I'm @zimmermaenner.
> 
> Special thanks to @zimmbits, who loved my Lil Angst Nuggets right from the start. 
> 
> I very much appreciate your kudos and comments. Honestly, this fic wouldn't exist if people hadn't told me that they cared.


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